Industrial Research Unit · Straits Institute for Applied AI
Applied AI in Manufacturing, Energy & Resources
40 entries on the record in manufacturing, energy & resources — 33 deployments, 4 pieces of evidence of adoption, 3 pieces of evidence of impact. Each one is traced to a named source and dated. Maintained continuously by the Industrial Research Unit; the record was last updated 14 Sep 2026.
Entries
40
Countries
27
Most recent
13 Sep 2026
Kind
Country
Role
40 entries
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesSouth Korea13 Sep 2026
LG Display staff build 450 AI projects, automating 190 tasks
LG Display — AX SQUAD, LG Display's scheme for turning ordinary staff into AI builders, has already produced roughly 450 applications tackling problems workers spot in their own jobs. Around 190 of those live inside manufacturing alone, covering defect classification plus an optical simulation tool still being built and a human resources survey system, showing how far employee-built AI applications have spread beyond IT departments. Reach will grow further from the second half of 2026, when the South Korean firm folds in procurement, supply chain, customer support, finance, management, sales and marketing, extending workplace AI automation well past its original manufacturing and development base.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesChina11 Sep 2026
China releases AI systems for mineral prospecting and geological mapping
Ministry of Natural Resources — The Ministry of Natural Resources released two AI mineral exploration and mapping systems, AI-OreSeeking and AI-GeoMapping, at the 28th China Mining Conference and Exhibition in Tianjin. AI-OreSeeking automates the prospecting workflow end to end and has been trialled in more than 100 projects across over ten provincial-level regions; test data from it indicate that mineral prediction and evaluation once taking half a year can now be finished in one week. AI-GeoMapping runs from preliminary research to map compilation, identifies geological bodies with accuracy above 90 per cent and lifts processing efficiency by more than 50 per cent against traditional methods, and has been tested across nearly 100 map sheets at 1:50,000 in Qinghai, Xizang, Xinjiang and Fujian among other regions; the AI geological mapping system is also being promoted and applied in countries such as Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Laos.
Evidence of impactManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesChile9 Sep 2026
Codelco maintenance chief says AI lifted production by 40%
Codelco — Iván Tobar, corporate maintenance manager at Codelco, Chile's state copper company, told a University of Santiago audience on 8 September AI in copper mining lifted production 40% and mineral recovery over 15% as technology use grew. The report does not identify the operations or period behind the figures, and no independent evaluation is published.
Evidence of adoptionManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesCosta Rica7 Sep 2026
53% of Costa Rican manufacturers now use AI, industry survey finds
Cámara de Industrias de Costa Rica (CICR) — The Costa Rican Chamber of Industries (CICR) finds, asking for the first time in its annual competitiveness survey, that 53% of manufacturers run some AI system or software. AI adoption in manufacturing hits 71.4% in free-trade zones versus 47.1% under the definitive regime, and 60.6% of large definitive-regime firms versus 38.9% of small and medium ones. Administration and business management (54.1%) and marketing or sales (52.5%) lead the uses, and 95.1% of AI users report no headcount change as a result.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesBotswana4 Sep 2026
Botswana Minerals defines nine copper corridors from an AI data review
Botswana Minerals — Botswana Minerals has outlined nine main exploration corridors across licences in the south, after an AI mineral exploration analysis merged decades of data over about 95,000 square kilometres. Sampling begins on the AI-picked prospects of highest priority, focusing corridors towards individual drill sites. The eight prospecting licences, some 7,000 square kilometres in the country's north-west, date from January 2026.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesUnited States3 Sep 2026
Santee Cooper brings Google AI into load and financial forecasting
Santee Cooper — South Carolina's state-owned power and water utility Santee Cooper is working with Google to modernise load forecasting and financial planning with AI. CFO Tami Wilson said Google's WeatherNext 2 weather model should improve load forecasts, Google's Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform is speeding financial forecasting, and several hundred Gemini Enterprise licences are going out across the organisation.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesChina2 Sep 2026
Offline AI monitors remote coalbed methane drilling sites in Shanxi
Shandong Coalfield Geological Bureau — The Third Exploration Team of the Shandong Coalfield Geologic Bureau and partners deployed edge AI safety monitoring at four remote coalbed methane drilling projects in the Qinshui Basin, in Shanxi. It analyses video and behaviour data on site instead of the cloud, with real-time voice alerts where connectivity is weak. The team cites emergency response cut from hours to minutes, 80% better hazard-inspection efficiency and about 25 drilling hours saved on one project; none is independently evaluated.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesUnited States30 Aug 2026
Caterpillar rolls out AI agents across its operations
Caterpillar — Caterpillar runs AI agents across its operations to modernise legacy code, generate and test software and catch defects earlier, and is introducing the Cat AI Assistant, agents that let field technicians find repair procedures and parts by voice. At the Ai4 conference, chief technology officer Jaime Mineart said the tools draw on roughly 1.6 million connected assets and 16-plus petabytes of data; the company plans $100 million to retrain 118,000 employees over five years.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesSouth Africa30 Aug 2026
BME brings a mining-specific AI model to drill-and-blast
BME — BME, an Omnia Holdings company, applies AI drill-and-blast optimisation and data analytics through a mining-specific 'vertical' AI model covering survey and planning to blast design, drilling, loading and hauling. Built into Xplosmart with BlastMap and the Xplolog drilling-data system, it uses digital twins and machine vision to follow rock from blast to crusher.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesUnited States25 Aug 2026
NuScale deploys nuclear-specific AI for its reactor engineers
NuScale Power — NuScale Power is deploying nuclear-specific AI tools from Nuclearn and NPX for engineering and knowledge management in its reactor programme. An initial proof of concept showed they could cut time spent finding relevant information by up to 80%, with every answer traced back to its original controlled source, the company says.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesUnited States19 Aug 2026
Sundt and Zachry run Bedrock's autonomous excavators on US sites
Sundt & Zachry — Sundt Construction and Zachry Construction have Bedrock Robotics' Operator retrofit kit, which turns ordinary excavators fully autonomous, working on active US infrastructure sites, including a Nevada water-treatment plant and a 1.2-million-cubic-yard civil earthworks project. After about a year of supervised testing, the machines now run with no operator on site. Bedrock's chief executive, Boris Sofman, says the system sees 360 degrees and can compress schedules.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesChina13 Aug 2026
CHN Energy runs 56 self-driving trucks at a Chinese coal mine
CHN Energy — CHN Energy runs 56 autonomous mining trucks among about 500 manned vehicles in shared traffic at the company's open-pit coal mine in China's north-west, coordinated by CiDi's MetaMine system. CiDi says its self-driving haulage system MetaMine had reached nearly 40 mines worldwide by mid-2026.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesGuyana13 Aug 2026
ExxonMobil uses AI to surface four new prospects off Guyana
ExxonMobil — ExxonMobil has found four new exploration opportunities in Guyana's Stabroek Block through AI oil exploration and advanced subsurface methods. Models trained on its past discoveries, drilling outcomes and subsurface data were turned on hard-to-evaluate acreage, blending advanced seismic imaging, high-performance computing, machine learning and deep learning. Exploration vice-president John Ardill says the company is widening their use for seismic analysis and prospect generation.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesUnited States12 Aug 2026
US contractors put jobsite AI to work, saving Hensel Phelps $342,000
Suffolk, Hensel Phelps, Burns & McDonnell — Suffolk, Hensel Phelps and Burns & McDonnell are putting jobsite AI to work. Hensel Phelps reported saving $342,000 using reality-capture tool Track3D for progress tracking on San Francisco International Airport's Courtyard 3 Connector; Burns & McDonnell vets preconstruction drawings with AI, and Suffolk's AI systems capture consistent jobsite data.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesBrazil12 Aug 2026
Vale and ABB extend AI automation across Brazil's iron-ore plants
Vale — Vale and ABB have widened their alliance to take automation and AI in mining across Vale's Brazilian iron ore processing plants, as already done at Conceição II in Itabira. That 11.2Mt-a-year complex has over 7,000 automated instruments, 100-plus monitoring cameras and data intelligence tracking 400-plus variables. Operations vice-president Carlos Medeiros reports 25% higher productivity, 40% more premium direct-reduction ore and 26% lower iron losses to tailings there.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesJordan9 Aug 2026
Jordan uses AI to find leaks across its water networks
Ministry of Water and Irrigation — Jordan's Smart Transformation Project for Water and Wastewater Services Management applies AI water leak detection to its networks, ministers Raed Abu Saud (Water and Irrigation) and Sami Smirat (Digital Economy) were told at the Dabouq Operations Centre. Abu Saud called it the Kingdom's first such project, with pilot areas showing lower pressure, smaller losses and better distribution. AI analysis of consumption and demand lets the Water Authority of Jordan and water companies detect supply imbalances sooner and move affected areas onto alternative sources.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesCuba7 Aug 2026
Havana's electricity utility will give dispatchers AI to rotate blackouts
Empresa Electrica de La Habana — Empresa Electrica de La Habana will hand dispatchers AI blackout scheduling tools built with mathematicians at the Facultad de Matematicas of the Universidad de La Habana. The utility says the decision-support software, shown to President Miguel Diaz-Canel, should even out how circuits are rotated and push notices to households over Telegram. Nothing is switched on yet: the company describes AI-driven outage rotation as work still under way, aimed at transparency and fairer sharing of cuts.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesUnited States5 Aug 2026
Novo Construction uses BuildCheck's AI to flag design changes in drawings
Novo Construction — Novo Construction is using Diffs, BuildCheck's AI tool, on two California projects to flag design changes between successive drawing packages pre-construction, replacing manual review of hundreds of pages. CIO Colin Stoner says it helps teams price early and track evolving drawings, while urging 'trust but verify' on AI output.
ADNOC deploys SLB's AI drilling analytics across 120 rigs
ADNOC — ADNOC and SLB run a DrillOps-powered Real-Time Operations Centre across 120-plus onshore and offshore rigs, feeding live data to AI drilling analytics that flag problems early. ADNOC credits the AI-led monitoring with 30 to 40 per cent less engineering effort, two to three times more rigs per engineer and up to two days' downtime avoided; no independent evaluation is published.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesTurkey22 Jul 2026
Istanbul's water utility says AI assistant will cut call-centre load
İSKİ (Istanbul Water and Sewerage Administration) — Istanbul's water and sewerage administration, İSKİ, launched the in-house İSKİ AI platform on 20 July for AI consumption forecasting, fault prediction and handling citizen requests. Deputy mayor Nuri Aslan says the Alo 185 smart assistant will cut call-centre workload by about 40% and forecasts will reach 97% accuracy.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesTurkmenistan27 Jun 2026
AI deployed at Turkmenistan's main oil refineries
Turkmenbashi Complex of Oil Refineries (TCOR) — Turkmenbashi Complex of Oil Refineries has finished modernising, adding automated production management, live SCADA monitoring, ERP platforms and AI in oilfield operations through Smart Fields and Smart Wells, which interpret geological data to lift well performance. Seydi Oil Refinery has added digital monitoring for predictive maintenance. Turkmengeologia State Corporation reports both operational, with AI-driven well optimisation cutting costs and improving resource management.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesBurundi20 Jun 2026
KoBold Metals puts AI to work on Burundi's geological archives
KoBold Metals — KoBold Metals has started AI mineral exploration over Burundi's geoscientific archives, a three-year job commissioned on 12 March 2026 and paid for by the firm. Holdings from national services and the Royal Museum for Central Africa are going digital, targeting scandium, nickel, copper, cobalt and platinum group metals. The government keeps ownership, local technicians are in training, and some material was due on the web by July 2026, with machine-learning prospecting sifting the files.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesLatvia19 Jun 2026
Latvian grid operator pilots AI for infrastructure inspection
AS Augstsprieguma tīkls (AST) — Latvia's power grid operator AS Augstsprieguma tīkls (AST) is trialling AI infrastructure inspection to shrink manual review time by 30 to 50 per cent. Partnering with SIA Datacom under EU funding, AST trains a prototype to spot damage across thousands of drone-shot images of transmission infrastructure. This aerial grid-defect detection tool remains at pilot stage.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesColombia17 Jun 2026
Cementos Argos brings machine learning to Cartagena plant planning
Cementos Argos — Cementos Argos has swapped manual grinding and inventory planning at its Cartagena plant for machine learning in cement production, an optimisation system that weighs hundreds of scenarios simultaneously and proposes actions. Built by in-house planning, production, supply-chain and analytics teams, it will spread to other Argos plants.
Evidence of adoptionManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesUnited Arab Emirates20 May 2026
ADNOC says it runs 115 AI agents and 3,000 staff-built models
ADNOC — ADNOC runs over 115 enterprise AI agents across auditing, procurement, finance and HR, chief executive Sultan Al Jaber told the UAE government's Agentic AI retreat. Some 20,000 staff trained to build job-specific AI models now use 3,000 daily, and company-wide AI utilisation reached 80% in the prior 90 days.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesSaudi Arabia28 Apr 2026
Aramco deploys hybrid AI models in refinery planning with Emerson
Aramco — Aramco has plugged Emerson's AI-driven Aspen Hybrid Models into its refinery planning, which Emerson calls among the largest multi-site, multi-period optimisation models anywhere. In Continuous Catalyst Regeneration and Platformer units, this AI refinery planning supports feedstock blending and margin forecasting, with yield and quality predictions up to 98.5% accurate in key units, per Emerson. Aramco says the hybrid models cut engineers' manual adjustments, and hydrocracker units come next.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesDR Congo13 Apr 2026
KoBold Metals opens an AI lithium exploration campaign across 13 Congolese licences
KoBold Metals — KoBold Metals, bankrolled by US billionaires Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, has begun what the firm bills as history's biggest AI mineral exploration drive: 13 permits spanning 3,000 sq km of the Democratic Republic of Congo's Manono belt, set to widen to 5,000 sq km by December. Over $50 million is committed through early 2027, funding aerial coverage of 30,000 sq km and beyond 30,000 soil assays. Machine-guided prospecting redirects crews weekly towards the strongest lithium ground, and the MetaLab container laboratory pulverises, dries and tests samples on site within days. Chief executive Kurt House says a year back the outfit owned no acreage and employed nobody there; it now ranks as America's biggest investor in the country.
Evidence of impactManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesChile2 Apr 2026
AI cameras cut risky worker–machine contact 90% at El Teniente
Codelco División El Teniente — Codelco's El Teniente division says AI workplace safety video analytics using 40 cameras has cut risky equipment–people interactions by 90% in monitored mine workshops. Specialists validate its automatic alerts; the system grew gradually from a workshop pilot in early 2024, and no independent evaluation is published.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesLibya27 Mar 2026
Libya's Sirte Oil Company drills its first well with AI steering
Sirte Oil Company (Libya) — Sirte Oil Company doubled its rate of penetration over earlier Al-Khair field rates with Libya's first AI directional drilling, working with SLB, the National Oil Corporation (NOC) says. An AI reservoir advisor read petrophysical logs live; paired with a drilling advisor, it drove automated drilling and geosteering, keeping the well within the target layer.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesCzechia18 Mar 2026
ČEZ runs AI turbine diagnostics at the Štěchovice II pumped-storage plant
ČEZ — ČEZ has switched on AI predictive maintenance for the turbine at its Štěchovice II pumped-storage station, calling the installation among the newest instances of such technology entering power generation. Microphones and vibration and pressure probes sampling at tens of kHz sit in tightly specified spots on the machine, feeding roughly 2,000 GB of condition monitoring data every month; the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at Brno University of Technology co-developed it. Róbert Heczko, in charge of the group's hydro fleet, said findings to date show some impending faults could be caught far ahead, letting outage planning improve — a reading the company has not had independently evaluated.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesBelarus28 Feb 2026
Bellegprom sells knitwear and shoes designed with AI
Bellegprom — Belarus's Bellegprom has AI clothing design running at member factories, with the output already on shop shelves. Svitanka knitwear carries appliques and prints drawn that way; Belvest applies the same approach to footwear. Olga Grabenya, the concern's trade and marketing head, says such stock moves through Bellegprom's own branded network. Designers and technologists stay on, because AI-generated prints still need someone judging what shoppers want.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesCanada19 Feb 2026
Toyota's Ontario plants put Digit humanoids on tote handling
Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada — Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada has signed a commercial deal with Agility Robotics to run Digit humanoid robots in its Ontario vehicle plants, after a year-long pilot with three robots through development, proof-of-technology and onsite phases. Seven more robots will move totes on and off an automated tugger. Toyota's plant president cited team member experience and operational efficiency.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesPeru19 Feb 2026
Chinalco runs Toromocho copper mine from AI-driven Lima operations centre
Minera Chinalco Perú — Minera Chinalco Perú has finished rolling out its Integrated Operations Management Centre (GIO), an AI mine operations centre heavy on analytics that now runs the entire Toromocho copper mine production chain under a hybrid organisational model. Staff are being trained in analysis, automation and remote operation.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesSaudi Arabia3 Feb 2026
Saudi Water Authority launches AI platform across the water value chain
Saudi Water Authority — The Saudi Water Authority and IBM have launched the H2O Platform, generative AI and hybrid cloud for AI water management across over 40 use cases in the Kingdom's water value chain. The water-resource AI offers live monitoring, trend spotting and predictive insight, per IBM, and a Consumer Assistant gives the public water services, consumption tracking and conservation tips.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesAzerbaijan15 Jan 2026
SOCAR Carbamide enters WEF Lighthouse network on 42 AI use cases
SOCAR Carbamide — SOCAR Carbamide at Sumqayit, Azerbaijan, has joined the World Economic Forum's Global Lighthouse Network among 22 freshly named factories, recognised for industrial AI in fertiliser production. Squeezed from 2022 by broken regional food routes, shaky natural gas feedstock and already flat out, the works layered 42 digitally enabled use cases over an in-house AI-machine learning engine, adding closed-loop autonomous process control, generative AI and shopfloor robots. Throughput climbed 21% and gas efficiency 24%.
Evidence of adoptionManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesGlobal2026
Regular AI use in construction rises to 19%, RICS finds
Regular AI use in construction rose to 19%, from just under 12% a year earlier, and the share of non-users fell by over a third, RICS's 2026 survey finds. It drew 1,883 construction and commercial-property responses in Q1.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesAlgeria22 Dec 2025
Sonatrach opens AI-powered drilling decision centre at Hassi Messaoud
Sonatrach — Rig-mounted cameras and live telemonitoring now feed Sonatrach's new ENTP EYES / Real Time Decision Support Center at Hassi Messaoud, an AI-powered drilling monitoring hub the Algerian state oil and gas firm has opened to track performance and streamline resource use during drilling and prospecting. The facility signals a broader turn toward AI in oil and gas decision-making, giving engineers a continuous operational picture instead of periodic reports.
Evidence of adoptionManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesUnited States2025
86% of large US contractors expect AI to give competitive advantage
86% of large US contractors expected an AI competitive advantage, against 69% of small and mid-sized firms, in a December 2025 Dodge Construction Network/CMiC survey of 235 contractors. Only 40% had a dedicated AI budget.
Evidence of impactManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesGlobal
AI could automate 39% of construction's nonphysical work, McKinsey estimates
AI could automate 39% of nonphysical work in construction and 50% in architecture and engineering, McKinsey estimates. This is automation potential, not current adoption.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesUnited States
Zachry uses AI scheduling to cut 28 days off a highway project
Zachry Construction trimmed 28 days from a $149 million Texas I-10 highway job using AI construction scheduling from ALICE Technologies. Modelling about 60 job orders took the AI scheduler around three minutes; the chosen plan shuffled tasks and reduced flat-work crews from nine to seven. Zachry and ALICE's founder claim the saving; no independent assessment has appeared.
South Korea
China
Chile
Costa Rica
Botswana
United States
South Africa
Guyana
Brazil
Jordan
Cuba
United Arab Emirates
Turkey
Turkmenistan
Burundi
Latvia
Colombia
Saudi Arabia
DR Congo
Libya
Czechia
Belarus
Canada
Peru
Azerbaijan
Algeria