France's Schneider Electric confirms $22.6 billion deal to buy US software firm PTC

JUST IN: France's Schneider Electric confirms a $22.6 billion deal to buy US industrial software firm PTC.

Twenty two point six billion dollars. That's what Schneider Electric just agreed to pay for an American software company.

The French giant, and there's the logo you've seen on half the world's electrical panels, confirmed this morning it's buying PTC, the Boston-based firm behind industrial design and lifecycle software. The stuff engineers use to build everything from jet parts to factory lines.

Schneider's whole pitch lately has been that the future of industry is software talking to hardware, and this is them putting real money where that pitch is. PTC, headquartered over in Boston, gets folded into a company that already runs the plumbing of global manufacturing.

Twenty two billion dollar deals between Europe and America don't just close quietly these days. Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic get a say, and that's where this story goes next.

This is Sara White, reporting for HIT.