Baker Hughes, C3.ai, and Microsoft Announce Alliance to Accelerate Digital Transformation of the Energy Industry

Joint offerings will help make energy operations safer, cleaner, and more efficient

Baker Hughes, C3.ai, and Microsoft Corp. today announced an alliance to bring enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) solutions to the energy industry on Microsoft Azure, an industry-leading cloud computing platform.

This alliance will enable customers to streamline the adoption of scalable AI solutions for the energy industry that help promote safety, reliability, and sustainability. It leverages the significant energy technology expertise of Baker Hughes, C3.ai’s proven AI platform and applications, and the Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform. As a result, energy businesses will have a secure and reliable suite of enterprise-scale AI applications optimized to run on Azure. These solutions are tailored to address challenges across the entire value chain, from inventory optimization and energy management to predictive maintenance and process and equipment reliability.

“Shell supports the aim of this strategic alliance to improve efficiencies, increase safety, and reduce environmental impact through digital transformation, aligning seamlessly with our goals and ambitions,” said Jay Crotts, Shell Group CIO. “Baker Hughes is one of our long-standing and valued partners in oilfield services and software development, and we use the C3.ai platform on Microsoft Azure to accelerate digital transformation across our business, helping to improve overall operations. The new technologies being developed will be critical as we all need to work together to reduce the net carbon footprint of the products and solutions that we put into society.”

“The industry is adopting technologies that help manage the challenges and opportunities associated with the energy transition. The AI solutions offered through Baker Hughes and C3.ai deliver insights that can reduce risk and improve performance for operators as they navigate this transition,” said Lorenzo Simonelli, Chairman and CEO, Baker Hughes. “With a singular offering that can accelerate digital transformation across the sector, energy businesses can now draw on the power of Microsoft’s cloud, C3.ai’s leading AI capabilities, and Baker Hughes’s expertise in the energy industry.”

“We are witnessing a massive market shift as oil and gas businesses undergo enterprise-level digital transformation to improve efficiencies and increase safety, while simultaneously reducing environmental impact,” said Thomas M. Siebel, CEO, C3.ai. “With Microsoft’s global reach and horizontal cloud platform, Baker Hughes’s technology domain expertise, and C3.ai’s industrial AI capabilities, organizations can rapidly improve core business operations and better serve customers with AI-enabled products and services. This strategic alliance is a complete game-changer for the industry.”

The solutions will simplify the process of adopting AI capabilities for energy companies, starting with the shift of data management, storage, and compute onto Azure, through the development and enterprise-wide deployment of domain-specific AI applications built on the BHC3 AI Suite.

“For the energy industry, this is a time of significant transformation, and forward-thinking companies are exploring how to leverage technology to make their operations cleaner, safer and more efficient,” said Judson Althoff, EVP, Worldwide Commercial Business, Microsoft. “By bringing together the domain expertise of Baker Hughes and the AI strengths of C3.ai to run on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, customers can achieve new levels of digital transformation while advancing their sustainability commitments.”

Source: Microsoft Corp. media announcement