Applied Computing raises $20M for Orbital, an AI model for oil & gas plants

Applied Computing, a London-based startup founded in 2023, has secured a $20 million Series A led by engineering giant KBR, with Databricks Ventures participating. The company is building Orbital, a foundation AI model tailored for the oil, gas, and petrochemical industry. These facilities often have thousands of sensors measuring temperature, pressure, velocity, and viscosity, yet operators currently use less than 8% of the available data for decision-making. Co-founder and CEO Callum Adamson explains that the challenge lies in combining sensor readings, engineering documentation, and physics/chemistry knowledge in real time. Orbital integrates a time-series model, a physics-based model, and a language model to predict the state of a facility, flag anomalies, investigate root causes, and simulate the impact of fixes—all within minutes, compressing what previously took weeks.

Orbital is already deployed at large, publicly listed upstream and downstream energy companies, with partners including Wipro and KBR (which integrated Orbital into its INSITE 3.0 platform). Applied Computing claims double-digit millions in annual recurring revenue in under 18 months. The startup faces competition from entrenched vendors like AspenTech, AVEVA, and data-layer startups such as Cognite and Seeq, but Adamson argues that the real moat is AI research talent, not data or domain expertise. The $20 million will fund international expansion (including a new Houston office), hiring for research and engineering roles, and deeper customer deployments. A partnership with a major European oil company is expected soon.