Applied Computing forges strategic partnership with Wipro and Databricks to accelerate the energy transition through physics-informed AI

The collaboration brings together Applied Computing's foundation AI platform, Orbital, and Wipro's global domain consulting expertise to help energy operators improve efficiency, reduce emissions and deploy AI reliably at scale on the Databricks platform. 

LONDON, March 31, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Applied Computing, the British AI firm building foundational AI for energy operators, today announced a strategic partnership with Wipro Limited, a leading AI-powered technology services and consulting company, and Databricks, the Data and AI company. The companies will help energy operators across the Middle East, India and Southeast Asia deploy AI to improve operational efficiency and accelerate the energy transition.   

Under the partnership, Wipro will work with Applied Computing to deploy Orbital, Applied Computing's physics-informed foundation AI platform for energy operations, across complex, mission-critical environments. Together, the companies will help energy operators move beyond AI pilots and experimentation, embedding explainable, verifiable AI directly into day-to-day operational workflows using the Databricks platform. 

The collaboration addresses a critical challenge facing energy operators worldwide: how to modernise ageing infrastructure and improve performance while meeting increasingly ambitious decarbonisation targets and operating in volatile markets. By combining Wipro's deep domain expertise in energy operations and digital transformation with Applied Computing's physics-informed foundation models, the partnership will deliver AI systems that are transparent, auditable and grounded in physical reality - enabling measurable business outcomes without compromising safety or reliability. 

"By combining Orbital's physics-grounded intelligence with Wipro's deep industry expertise and Databricks' open data platform, we make it incredibly easy for energy operators to embed superintelligent AI directly into their workflows," said Dan Jeavons, President of Applied Computing. "This helps to move the industry beyond experimentation to real-world impact - reducing costs, improving resilience, and accelerating the energy transition with solutions that engineers can actually trust and verify." 

Sidharth Mishra, Head of Wipro Consulting for Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, emphasised the partnership's practical focus: "Energy operators don't need more AI experiments - they need proven solutions that deliver measurable value while meeting the highest standards of safety and reliability. Through our consulting-led approach and Wipro Intelligence™, our unified suite of AI-powered platforms, solutions, and transformative offerings, we are making AI deployment as predictable, verifiable and scalable. This partnership showcases how science, process and AI come together to deliver real transformation to our clients." 

Julien Debard, Director of Energy and Utilities at Databricks, highlighted the role of open platforms: "The energy transition requires moving from vision to value at an unprecedented speed. By unifying AI apps, analytics and agents on Databricks, it puts the power of AI in the hands of every user while maintaining the governance and auditability essential for regulated industries. This partnership shows how open ecosystems enable energy companies to adopt best-in-class AI without sacrificing control of their data or intellectual property." 

The critical role of applied AI in energy transformation: 

As global energy demand continues to rise and pressure mounts to reduce emissions, operators need AI systems that understand the physical realities of energy production - not just statistical correlations. 

Physics-informed foundation models represent a significant step forward. By embedding chemical engineering principles, thermodynamics and process constraints directly into AI architectures, these systems can generate recommendations that intuitively understand physical laws while optimising for economic and environmental objectives. This approach enables AI to be used not just for analysis, but for real-time operational decision-making. 

Traditional AI and scientific modelling approaches in energy typically use less than 10% of available operational data, leaving much of the signal untapped. The partnership's approach leverages multi-modal foundation models that process time-series sensor data, physics simulations and engineering knowledge simultaneously, allowing operators to make use of the full operational picture rather than isolated data streams. 

Complementary capabilities for real-world impact: 

Wipro brings decades of experience delivering digital solutions for global energy operators, with proven capabilities spanning cloud migration, edge computing and large-scale AI deployment. Wipro has established trusted relationships with major energy companies across the region, taking a pragmatic approach to ensure that AI solutions transition from pilot projects to production environments without disrupting critical operations. 

Applied Computing's Orbital is the industry's first foundational AI platform purpose-built for energy operations. Developed by a team with deep experience across energy and advanced AI, Orbital combines time-series forecasting, physics-based modelling and language understanding trained on decades of chemical and process engineering expertise. The platform delivers explainable, physics-grounded outputs, enabling engineers to understand, trust and verify AI recommendations before acting on them. 

Delivering verifiable AI on open data platforms: 

The partnership will leverage Databricks as the foundational data and AI platform. Databricks' lakehouse architecture enables secure, governed data sharing across organisations while maintaining strict privacy and compliance controls - an essential requirement for energy companies managing long-lived, regulated assets. Unity Catalog provides centralised data governance, Delta Sharing supports controlled collaboration, and the company's open architecture avoids vendor lock-in.  

As a member of the Databricks AI Accelerator Programme, Applied Computing has built its AI deployment strategy on the Databricks platform, while Wipro's consulting-led, AI-powered delivery makes it easier for energy operators to adopt and scale these solutions in production environments. 

Initial deployments will focus on downstream refining and petrochemical operations, where complexity and scale provide a rigorous proving ground for AI-driven optimisation. Solutions will be benchmarked against industry standards, with performance measured against operational KPIs including margin improvement, emissions reduction and energy-efficiency gains.

All deployments will include comprehensive explainability features, allowing engineers to trace AI recommendations back to underlying physics, historical performance data and real-time sensor inputs - a critical requirement for decisions that affect safety, environmental compliance and asset performance.