Applied Computing wants to provide oil and gas operators with a plant-wide artificial intelligence model

Applied informaticsa London-based start-up building a baseline AI model for the oil, gas and petrochemical industries has raised $20 million in Series A funding led by engineering giant KBR with participation from Databricks Ventures.

Founded in 2023, the startup is targeting oil, gas, refining and petrochemical systems, where a single facility can have thousands of sensors measuring everything from temperature and pressure to velocity and viscosity. While there is a huge market in order to help energy companies solve the data tracking problem, fragmentation presents a significant obstacle.

As a result, businesses make operational decisions using less than 8% of the data available to them, says Applied Computing co-founder and CEO Callum Adamson (pictured above right). Operators already collect much of this information, he said, but they struggle to integrate sensor readings, engineering documentation, and physics and chemistry quickly enough to analyze and make predictions.

“It’s going to make these three data sources talk to each other in real time. That’s the real key,” he told TechCrunch.

Unlike large language models that predict the next word, Applied Computing says its core model, Orbital, combines a time series model, a physical model and a language model to predict the state of an object. It does this by analyzing sensor readings, taking into account physics and chemistry, and recognizing facility equipment limitations and operator activity. It also allows technicians to run simulations of how changing one part of a facility might affect the rest of its operation.

At its heart, Applied Computing is all about speed: Orbital claims Orbital can flag anomalies, investigate what caused them, and model whether a proposed fix could create problems elsewhere in the enterprise, all within minutes. Adamson claims the product can compress investigations that used to take days or weeks into seconds, helping operators reduce energy consumption and maintain productivity.

This promise of speed seems to have found believers. The startup says it has gone from hidden to double-digit millions in annual revenue in less than 18 months. Adamson said Orbital is used by some “large, publicly traded” oil and gas, refining and petrochemical companies, but declined to say how many customers it has.

Its partners include Indian energy company Wipro and KBR, which has integrated Orbital into its INSITE 3.0 digital platform for energy projects and uses the product to produce ammonia. Adamson said the startup is also working with a “major US mining operator” and plans to announce a partnership with a European oil major in the coming weeks.

However, Applied Computing is entering a market that has established industrial software vendors as well as more focused AI startups. AspenTech sells artificial intelligence-based modeling and simulation software for exploration, processing and chemical operations, and I WAS offers physics-based process simulation, optimization and what-if modeling for industrial enterprises. Cognitive and See targets the data layer, helping facilities analyze industrial data and apply artificial intelligence to design work processes.

Adamson says the company’s moat isn’t access to industrial data or process knowledge, but rather to bring together AI researchers to build a model that can compete with Orbital.

“It’s an AI problem. It’s not a data problem and it’s not an energy problem,” he said. “If you’re a Tier 1 AI researcher, where are you going to work?… I don’t think Shell is on that list.”

Adamson also pointed to the data that Orbital receives through its deployments. He said operational data from refineries and other energy facilities is usually not available, while simulated data cannot fully reproduce what happens inside a working plant.

A KBR partnership could also help the company. Adamson said the partnership gives Applied Computing access to operational data and industry expertise, as well as exposure to more potential customers.

Applied Computing plans to use the $20 million to expand internationally, hire for research and engineering roles and explore deployments with energy customers.

The company said Thursday that it has also opened an office in Houston, adding to its London headquarters and an operations center in Bengaluru. Adamson said the U.S. base brings the startup closer to two existing customers in North America, and expansion into the Middle East is also in the works.