London-based AI company founded in 2023 building Orbital, a physics-informed foundation model for energy operations in oil and gas, refineries and petrochemical facilities.
Applied Computing, founded in 2023 and headquartered in London, builds artificial intelligence for the energy industry. Its flagship product, Orbital, is a physics-informed foundation model designed for operations across oil and gas, refineries and petrochemical facilities - some of the world's most complex industrial environments. The company has raised over $32 million in a seed round that ranks among the largest for an AI company in the United Kingdom, and it supports two to three customer deployments per quarter.
Orbital combines three modelling approaches. A time series model connects to DCS, historians and LIMS systems to learn from raw operational data; a physics-based model extracts governing equations and constrains predictions to respect mass balance, energy conservation and reaction kinetics; and a language model trained on chemical engineering knowledge reads P&IDs, standard operating procedures and work orders to supply context and recommendations. The technical domains span time series and physics-informed modelling, large language and foundation models, process control data integration, and chemical engineering knowledge modelling.
Teams operate in pods alongside machine learning and data engineers, working closely with customer facilities rather than in isolation. Engineering principles emphasise explainability and physics-grounding in deployed systems, and the stated aim of technology that enhances human judgement rather than replacing it. The company describes its mission as pursuing sustainable abundance for a growing planet.
