The Scoop
An Abu Dhabi-backed firm plans to sell artificial intelligence technology it developed for ADNOC’s oilfields to other resource-rich nations, a top executive told Semafor.
AIQ — a joint venture between national oil company ADNOC and Presight, backed by AI firm G42 — has developed software that ADNOC says has helped reduce downtime at drilling sites through predictive maintenance and increased productivity, cutting project timelines from weeks down to a matter of hours. It is now exploring deals in countries where Presight has contracts, such as Albania, Angola, Azerbaijan, Colombia, Kazakhstan, and Paraguay, AIQ’s acting managing director Magzhan Kenesbai said.
The firm is also looking to make acquisitions, Kenesbai added, declining to give specifics. He called reports of an IPO “speculation” and declined to comment further.
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AIQ employs around 80 developers and energy experts at its offices in the “old HQ” of ADNOC, a mid-century office building on the oil major’s downtown Abu Dhabi campus. The company is focused primarily on “Agentic AI,” which uses large language models capable of autonomously solving complex, multi-step problems. The approach is well suited for the energy industry which depends on reams of audio, visual, and numerical data to locate and extract hydrocarbons as quickly, cleanly, and inexpensively as possible.
“Our biggest competitive advantage is that in the world of AI you need talent, resources, and data in order to excel,” Kenesbai said. “Ninety-nine percent of the market has talent and resources. But what they truly lack, as a general trend for the industry, is access to data.”
ADNOC has opened up its archives to AIQ, sharing over 50 years worth of data to tailor AI models. Last week it signed a $340 million deal with AIQ to deploy agentic AI across all of its oilfields.