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Applied Computing lands $20M for refinery AI model
London startup Applied Computing raised a $20 million Series A to expand Orbital, its industrial model for oil, gas, refining, and petrochemicals.
Image: TNW
Applied Computing has raised a $20 million Series A to expand Orbital, its foundation model for oil, gas, refining, and petrochemicals. The round was led by KBR, with Databricks Ventures participating.
Founded in 2023, the London startup argues that refineries already collect huge amounts of operational data but use very little of it. A single refinery can have thousands of sensors measuring temperature, pressure, velocity, and viscosity, yet operators make decisions using less than 8% of what those sensors report, according to the company.
CEO and co-founder Callum Adamson says the bottleneck is not data collection but connecting three different inputs quickly enough to make predictions: sensor readings, engineering documentation, and the underlying physics and chemistry.
“It’s getting those three data sources to talk to each other in real time. That’s the real key.”
Applied Computing says Orbital is not simply a language model adapted for industrial use. The system combines:
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- a time series model
- a physics-based model
- a language model
The goal is to predict the state of a facility by reading live sensor data while accounting for chemistry, equipment constraints, and operator actions. The company says technicians can also simulate how a change in one part of a plant would affect the rest of the site.
That speed is central to the pitch. Applied Computing claims Orbital can detect an anomaly, identify its cause, and test whether a fix creates problems elsewhere within minutes. Adamson said investigations that once took days or weeks can be reduced to seconds.
Some commercial traction is already in place, according to the company. Applied Computing says it went from stealth to double-digit millions in annual recurring revenue in under 18 months, with deployments at unnamed “large, publicly listed” upstream, refining, and petrochemical companies. Adamson did not disclose customer numbers.
KBR partnership and expansion plans
KBR has integrated Orbital into its INSITE 3.0 platform and is using it for ammonia production. Adamson also said the company is working with a major US upstream operator and expects to announce a European oil major in the coming weeks.
The market is already crowded with established players including AspenTech, AVEVA, Cognite, and Seeq. Adamson’s argument is that the edge will come from attracting top-tier AI researchers rather than relying only on industrial data or process expertise.
The new funding will go toward international expansion and research and engineering hires. The company opened a Houston office on Thursday, alongside its London headquarters and Bengaluru operational hub. The Middle East is next.
Enterprise Editor
Marcus follows the money. He covers enterprise software, cloud architecture, and the tectonic shifts in Big Tech strategy. He translates dense earnings calls and complex M&A activity into actionable insights about where the industry is actually heading. If a tech giant makes a silent pivot, Marcus is usually the first to notice.
via TNW
