Applied Computing unveils the next generation of Orbital at ADIPEC, the first-ever world model for energy
- Orbital 2.0 by Applied Computing is built on a first-ever world model for energy that learns cause and effect across a whole plant, rather than patterns in data.
- Every customer gets their own world model that runs and evolves inside their own environment. Their data and models never leave.
- Energy operators running Orbital can see the plant-wide impact of every decision before they make it, so they can push production higher while keeping the plant reliable and safe.
- The launch follows Applied Computing's $20 million Series A in July 2026, led by KBR with participation from Databricks Ventures.
ABU DHABI, UAE, Nov. 3, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Applied Computing, the British AI company building AI for energy operators, today unveils Orbital 2.0 at ADIPEC 2026. Orbital 2.0 is rebuilt on a world model architecture, and puts the power to shape it directly in the hands of users.
A world model for energy
The first version of Orbital learned patterns in a plant's data to carry out fixed tasks. The new Orbital by Applied Computing is built on a world model that learns cause and effect instead: how mass and heat move through every connected piece of equipment, and what that means for the plant's output. Because it understands how the plant behaves, rather than memorising patterns, it is no longer tied to a single workflow or task, and it can adapt to whatever an engineer needs.
The world model is built on a knowledge graph of the plant's physical interactions and improves itself over time. Every customer gets their own world model that runs and evolves inside their own environment. Their data and models never leave.
What's new in Orbital by Applied Computing
Orbital is Applied Computing's AI for running energy plants at their physical optimum, every day. It connects to a plant's live and historical data, spots what is going wrong, explains why using the physics of the process, and recommends what to do next. It is already delivering results at some of the world's largest energy and petrochemical assets, and through KBR INSITE it is in use on ammonia and olefins units.
Orbital 2.0 by Applied Computing adds capabilities such as:
- Dashboards built to order. Engineers can describe the dashboard they want, or pick one of Orbital's suggestions, and Orbital builds it automatically from live plant data without manual intervention.
- Apps that run themselves. Recurring work, such as the 8am shift report or a heat and mass balance check, becomes an app that Orbital creates via a simple prompt.
- Recursive self-learning. Orbital learns from every interaction and from what engineers tell it directly, so it gets smarter the more it is used, and knowledge about the plant stays when people move on.
Together, these changes remove the need for Applied Computing's researchers to tune and adapt the model inside each customer's environment, reducing the cycle time for deployment from weeks to days and allowing Applied Computing to scale deployments concurrently. Moreover, users can rapidly customise and extend Orbital themselves.
Callum Adamson, CEO and co-founder of Applied Computing, said: "Our mission is to get every energy system running at its physical optimum, and the fastest way to do that is to put Orbital in engineers' hands. Until now, adapting the model to each plant relied on our researchers. That barrier is gone: Orbital now learns for itself and can be fully customised by the engineers who use it every day. We are bringing it to ADIPEC because this is where the industry comes to decide what the next decade of energy looks like."
Dr. Samyakh Tukra, Chief AI Officer and co-founder of Applied Computing, said: "The first version of Orbital learned the patterns in a plant's data. What we have built now is a world model. It learns cause and effect, understands how a plant actually behaves, and gets better every day it runs. A plant is always evolving, and so is the work of the engineers who run it, so Orbital cannot stand still either."
About Applied Computing:
Applied Computing builds AI for energy operations. Its product, Orbital, is built on a world model for energy that combines physics-grounded intelligence with models across chemical engineering, time-series forecasting and language. Orbital provides real-time optimisation that operators can trust in the most complex environments, from refineries and petrochemical facilities to LNG, wind and hydro. Founded in London by Callum Adamson (CEO) and Dr Sam Tukra (Chief AI Officer), Applied Computing is already working with some of the world's most complex industrial sites. In July 2026, the company raised a $20 million Series A led by KBR, with participation from Databricks Ventures.
appliedcomputing.com
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