SBM Offshore has expanded its collaboration with industrial AI specialist Cognite to accelerate data-driven operations across its Brazilian floating production fleet. The initiative will see Cognite’s Data Fusion platform rolled out at scale, consolidating fragmented datasets across the asset lifecycle into a unified framework.
The companies have been working together for the past 18 months to create an AI-ready foundation, and the extension of this partnership is designed to move beyond pilots into full operational deployment. By integrating engineering and operational data, SBM Offshore aims to cut the time spent on manual consolidation and give teams direct access to contextualised insights for faster decision-making.
According to Øivind Tangen, CEO of SBM Offshore, the collaboration represents a structural change in how the company manages its fleet. “Our partnership with Cognite empowers us to industrialise the use of data-driven insights, refining each step of our FPSO lifecycle and elevating fleet performance to higher standards of safety, efficiency, and reliability,” he said.
One of the primary objectives is to reduce downtime risk by applying AI to maintenance prioritisation and operational monitoring. Predictive models will be used to identify critical components at risk of failure, enabling earlier intervention. The companies claim this will improve asset availability while cutting lifecycle costs by avoiding unnecessary interventions.
For Cognite, the project underscores the value of building scalable data structures in complex industrial environments. Founder Dr. John Markus Lervik described SBM Offshore’s adoption as a benchmark for digitalisation in offshore operations, stating that ontology-driven data models and AI-enabled workflows are “modernising maintenance, reducing downtime risk, and creating a scalable blueprint for digital operations.”
The collaboration also positions SBM Offshore to make greater use of Cognite’s Atlas AI platform, a low-code environment designed to accelerate the development of predictive and analytical tools for industrial users. This could give SBM’s engineering teams direct access to customised AI applications without relying solely on external development resources.
The partnership aligns with a broader digital ecosystem in offshore energy, where SBM Offshore is also working with SLB to expand AI-driven workflows. For operators under pressure to improve performance while cutting emissions, the ability to link domain expertise with contextualised data is increasingly becoming a competitive differentiator.
As SBM Offshore scales its AI-enabled operations, the next phase will focus on embedding these systems across all major FPSO assets in Brazil. With Petrobras and other operators demanding higher reliability and cost efficiency, the move is likely to become a reference case for digitalisation across the sector.
