--- title: Applied Computing raises $20m to build a foundation... description: Applied Computing, a London startup founded in 2023, has raised a $20m Series A led by engineering firm KBR with Databricks Ventures participating. The company... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/applied-computing-raises-20m-to-build-a-foundation-model-for-the-refinery-icyhyfbr4 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Applied Computing raises $20m to build a foundation model for the refinery | daily.dev og:description: Applied Computing, a London startup founded in 2023, has raised a $20m Series A led by engineering firm KBR with Databricks Ventures participating. The company... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/applied-computing-raises-20m-to-build-a-foundation-model-for-the-refinery-icyhyfbr4 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/IcyhYfBR4.png og:image:alt: Applied Computing raises $20m to build a foundation model for the refinery og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Applied Computing raises $20m to build a foundation model for the refinery **[The Next Web](https://daily.dev/sources/tnw)** · 4 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Applied Computing, a London startup founded in 2023, has raised a $20m Series A led by engineering firm KBR with Databricks Ventures participating. The company is building Orbital, a foundation model for oil, gas, refining, and petrochemicals that fuses time series data, physics-based modeling, and language understanding to help operators predict facility states and simulate changes in real time. The startup claims operators currently use less than 8% of sensor data collected, and that Orbital can compress anomaly investigations from days to minutes. It reached double-digit millions in ARR within 18 months and has integrated with KBR's INSITE 3.0 platform. The company faces established competitors like AspenTech and AVEVA, and its core bet is that top AI talent will choose a startup over incumbents like Shell. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Applied Computing wants to give oil and gas operators an AI model for the entire plant](https://daily.dev/posts/applied-computing-wants-to-give-oil-and-gas-operators-an-ai-model-for-the-entire-plant-afcyqzfuj) · TechCrunch · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Orbital Industries raises $50M Series B for AI-designed data-centre hardware](https://daily.dev/posts/orbital-industries-raises-50m-series-b-for-ai-designed-data-centre-hardware-rzilfbr86) · The Next Web · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Orbital Inference Data Center Bets On Space GPUs](https://daily.dev/posts/orbital-inference-data-center-bets-on-space-gpus-1tc8u7ied) · IEEE Spectrum · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Aramco Digital teams up with OrbitronAI to build AI for heavy industry](https://daily.dev/posts/aramco-digital-teams-up-with-orbitronai-to-build-ai-for-heavy-industry-01kcdgtxp) · The Next Web · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Oratomic Raises $300 Million Series A](https://daily.dev/posts/oratomic-raises-300-million-series-a-qy0uduyrx) · The Quantum Insider · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#data-science](https://daily.dev/tags/data-science), [#digital-twin](https://daily.dev/tags/digital-twin) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/applied-computing-raises-20m-to-build-a-foundation-model-for-the-refinery-icyhyfbr4) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Applied Computing raises $20m to build a foundation model for the refinery","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/applied-computing-raises-20m-to-build-a-foundation-model-for-the-refinery-icyhyfbr4","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/applied-computing-raises-20m-to-build-a-foundation-model-for-the-refinery-icyhyfbr4"},"datePublished":"2026-07-16T09:19:42.966Z","dateModified":"2026-07-16T09:20:10.795Z","description":"Applied Computing, a London startup founded in 2023, has raised a $20m Series A led by engineering firm KBR with Databricks Ventures participating. 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