Applied Computing lands $20M to expand foundation AI for energy
Tech.eu Tamara Djurickovic ● Covered by 2 sources
London-based Applied Computing just raised $20M, led by energy giant KBR, to build AI models for oil and gas operations. The kicker: KBR and Applied Computing are now locked into an exclusive, multi-year product deal.
Based on reporting by Tech.eu, Tamara Djurickovic — read the original for the full story.
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Foundation models built for chatting and coding get most of the headlines, but Applied Computing is betting there's real money in models built for something far less glamorous: running oil rigs, refineries and petrochemical plants without blowing carbon budgets or missing a beat. The London company just closed a $20 million round led by KBR, with Databricks Ventures also chipping in, to push that bet further.
The product at the center of it all is called Orbital. Rather than a single do-everything model, it's a stack that mixes physics-informed AI with tools tuned for chemical engineering, time-series forecasting and language, aimed squarely at upstream, downstream and petrochemical operators. The pitch is that general-purpose AI doesn't understand how a refinery actually behaves under pressure, and Orbital does, because it was built for that world from the start rather than adapted to it after the fact.
KBR isn't just writing a check here. The two companies already had a working relationship, and this round comes bundled with a new multi-year agreement to co-develop AI products exclusively for the energy sector. That's a meaningful tightening of the relationship, and it signals KBR wants a hand in shaping what gets built rather than just buying access to it later.
Applied Computing says the last year brought a string of partnerships, a bigger footprint in India, and new senior hires pulled from both energy and AI backgrounds, which is the kind of groundwork that tends to precede exactly this sort of raise. CEO and co-founder Callum Adamson framed the money as fuel for getting Orbital into more operators' hands globally, describing the goal as giving companies a foundation model that makes production safer, more efficient, and less carbon intensive at scale.
Concretely, the cash goes toward opening a new office in Houston, on top of existing bases in London and Bengaluru, plus growing the research and engineering teams and deepening ties with the energy customers already in the fold. It's not a flashy consumer story, but if AI is actually going to move the needle on emissions from heavy industry, this is closer to where that fight gets won or lost than anything happening in a chatbot interface.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
Nobody's going to get excited about a foundation model for petrochemical plants the way they get excited about the latest chatbot, but that's exactly why this deal deserves attention. KBR isn't a hype-chasing VC, it's an engineering firm with skin in the game, and locking in an exclusive multi-year deal alongside the investment tells you it expects to actually use this thing, not just flip the stake. The AI industry spends a lot of energy chasing generality; this is a reminder that specificity, applied to genuinely dirty and dangerous industries, might be where the money and the impact both actually show up first.
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