Baker Hughes forms new tech alliance to boost AI solutions

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

The alliance expects to streamline the adoption of scalable AI solutions for the oil and gas industry at a time when “forward-thinking” companies are exploring ways to make their operations cleaner, safer and more efficient, said Judson Althoff, executive vice president of worldwide commercial business at 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,” Althoff said in a statement.

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.

“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,” Baker Hughes CEO Lorenzo Simonelli said in a statement.

The alliance, which is supported by Shell, said its AI-enabled products and services will be 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. ... 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,” said Jay Crotts, Shell Group Chief Information Officer, in a statement.