The C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute (DTI) today announced that global energy company Shell is the newest industry partner to join the consortium of universities, national laboratories, and companies that make up the Institute. Shell’s Chief Scientist - Computation and Data Science Detlef Hohl will represent the company in the consortium.

The DTI Industry Partner Program enables leading companies from around the world to engage with DTI researchers and activities and to contribute data sets that will be available for research after anonymization. Industry partners also are encouraged to engage with Institute researchers and collaborate on research projects as well as participate in DTI conferences.

DTI recently released its second call for proposals to fund advanced research projects focused on applying digital transformation and AI to address energy and climate security.

“Shell has established clear leadership in new energy, having laid out its ‘Powering Progress’ commitment to accelerate the transition of Shell’s businesses to net zero emissions,” said Tom Siebel, C3 AI founder and CEO. “Shell will be an important partner as DTI accelerates its clean energy and climate initiatives.”

“At Shell, we have a long history in the area of Data Science. AI has made phenomenal progress in the past decade and will undoubtedly be one of the driving forces behind enabling the transition to a lower-carbon world, but we recognise that we cannot solve these issues on our own,” said Detlef Hohl. “We believe that partnerships between industry, technology companies, and academia are vital to accelerating the impact that AI can have in the energy sector. We are pleased to become a part of the renowned C3DTI and to play our part in accelerating the benefits of artificial intelligence across business, government, and society.”

“We welcome Shell to the C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute and look forward to working together to apply digital transformation science to advance its innovative and ambitious energy transition goals,” said S. Shankar Sastry, C3.ai DTI co-director and the Thomas M. Siebel Professor in Computer Science at UC Berkeley.

“Shell and Microsoft are committed to working closely together to achieve a net-zero emissions future,” said Judson Althoff, executive vice president, Worldwide Commercial Business, Microsoft. “Shell will be an impactful new leader in the C3.ai DTI energy and climate initiatives.”

About C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute

Established in March 2020 by C3 AI, Microsoft, and leading universities, the C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute is a research consortium dedicated to accelerating the benefits of artificial intelligence for business, government, and society. The Institute engages the world’s leading scientists to conduct research and train practitioners in the new Science of Digital Transformation, which operates at the intersection of artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud computing, internet of things, big data analytics, organizational behavior, public policy, and ethics.

The ten C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute consortium member universities and laboratories are: University of California, Berkeley, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Carnegie Mellon University, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, National Center for Supercomputing Applications at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Princeton University, Stanford University, and University of Chicago. Additional industry partners include AstraZeneca and Baker Hughes.

To support the Institute, C3 AI is providing the Institute $57,250,000 in cash contributions over the first five years of operation. C3 AI and Microsoft will contribute an additional $310 million of in-kind support, including use of the C3 AI® Suite and Microsoft Azure computing, storage, and technical resources to support C3.ai DTI research.

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