SBM Offshore reimaging FPSO ops with Cognite and SLB to power next wave of AI-enabled innovation

October 2, 2025, by Melisa Cavcic

Netherlands-based SBM Offshore, a provider of the design, construction, installation, and operation of offshore floating facilities, has strengthened ties with Cognite, an industrial AI software-as-a-service (SaaS) company, and SLB, a U.S.-headquartered technology player, to create an enhanced artificial intelligence (AI) blueprint envisioned to bolster operational efficiency and fuel further innovation in floating production systems.

FPSO Alexandre de Gusmão; Source: SBM Offshore

In a move designed to accelerate their strategic collaboration, a new initiative has sprung up to deploy the Cognite industrial AI and data platform across SBM Offshore’s entire Brazilian floating production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) fleet.

This step, which is expected to leverage unified AI and data, comes after the two players spent 18 months working to establish an AI-ready data foundation using Cognite Data Fusion, which the Dutch giant will scale to unify and standardize fragmented datasets across the full asset lifecycle.

As a result, the solution is said to provide teams with instant access to actionable insights from engineering to operations, eliminating manual data consolidation and creating a consistent, shared understanding across the fleet.

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SBM Offshore emphasizes that the initial phase of this collaboration is already showing promising potential to prioritize maintenance by using AI to predict and protect the availability of critical FPSO components and spare parts.

The alliance, which is perceived to allow the firm to reduce unplanned downtime by gaining real-time, risk-based insights into FPSO operations to prevent disruptions, is enabling the company to optimize lifecycle costs, prioritizing interventions and applying continuous learning from operational anomalies and events.

Øivind Tangen, CEO at SBM Offshore, highlighted: “Our partnership with Cognite empowers us to industrialize 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.”

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While laying the groundwork for greater automation and smarter decision-making, SBM Offshore claims that the data foundation paves the way for the advanced use of Cognite Atlas AI, a low-code industrial AI agent workbench offering predictive and analytical capabilities.

The Dutch player elaborates that this collaboration supports its broader digital ambition to harness industrial data and AI to establish its leadership in offshore digitalization. The two companies, alongside a partner like SLB, are expanding a wider digital ecosystem where AI-driven solutions can scale up faster and deliver greater impact across the offshore industry.

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Dr. John Markus Lervik, Founder of Cognite, underscored: “SBM Offshore’s ontology-driven approach is an excellent example of how creating an AI-ready industrial data foundation enables real, measurable impact.

“By unifying complex industrial data and linking reliability models, SBM Offshore is combining wide access to contextualized data with deep domain expertise to modernize maintenance, reduce downtime risk, and create a scalable blueprint for digital operations.”

SBM Offshore has also agreed to enter into an exclusive digital alliance with SLB to transform the performance of offshore production systems, merging the latter’s digital and domain expertise in subsurface, subsea, surface production, and recovery with the former’s digital and full FPSO lifecycle capabilities.

Rakesh Jaggi, President of Digital & Integration at SLB, underlined: “This exclusive alliance with SBM Offshore marks a pivotal moment in offshore assets production and recovery. By integrating decades of operational data and domain expertise through SLB’s scalable digital platform, we’re not only unlocking actionable insights — we are optimizing the FPSO value chain to enhance asset performance.”

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The two companies intend to use their respective digital capabilities to forge an AI-powered digital ecosystem that bolsters FPSO digital asset management by improving uptime performance and reducing the total cost of ownership for offshore operators.

The digital ecosystem will integrate SBM Offshore’s operational workflows, data, and lifecycle expertise with SLB’s digital technologies, including its OptiSite solutions, which are enabled by Cognite Data Fusion as part of the U.S. firm’s Lumi data and AI platform.

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The goal is to proactively identify and resolve emerging challenges before they escalate through real-time, contextualized insights drawn from the full asset infrastructure, including subsea wells, risers, flowlines, and topside systems workflows, enabling more efficient and agile decision-making throughout the lifecycle of offshore production.

Olivier Icyk, SBM Offshore’s Chief Business Officer, noted: “This strategic alliance with SLB is a natural evolution of our digital strategy and mirrors our ambition to digitalize the FPSO operations.

“Together with SLB, we combine complementary industry-leading expertise, experience, data driven work processes and proven services and technologies which will enhance further full field optimization, thanks to this unique vertical integration from reservoir to FPSO.”