Aramco is generating significant business value by using AI. (Image source: Adobe Stock)

At the 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos, Aramco president and CEO Amin Nasser shared how the company’s strategic investments in AI and human capital, along with a focus on data quality, has resulted in over US6bn in realised business value

“Last year, I talked about 400 use cases that we came up with in Saudi Aramco. This year, we’re talking about 500 use cases,” he said. “100 use cases went from pilots to actual deployments. We used to have around US$200 to US$300mn in the previous years in terms of technology realised value. In 2023 and 2024, we achieved US$6bn. More than 50% of this is AI-related.

“We’ve seen the benefits of the huge infrastructure that we have built over 90 years. Everybody talks about AI, the impact of AI, but where is the value? This is what we are able to establish. We want to turn the energy sector to be more intelligent in terms of capitalising on AI.

“The 6,000 talents that we trained on AI, these are the subject matter experts that come up with the use cases,” he stressed. “The most important thing in all of this is the data quality. We have built data quality over 90 years, [and] we kept everything. Now we have over 90% of the productive zone capitalising on AI, increasing the productivity in some wells by 30 to 40%. That is huge.”

Nasser pointed out that implementing use cases is very important to demonstrate value. “It’s not about buying chips and GPUs, it’s ensuring that you have the system, that data quality. You need to see that intelligence in terms of running the operations scaled up across the industry.”

He emphasised that a lot of what Aramco adopts and scales not only applies to the energy industry, but can help other industries as well.

Also at the World Economic Forum, Aramco's executive vice president of technology and innovation, Ahmad al Khowaiter, highlighted how Aramco’s venture capital investments, industrial ecosystem, and AI infrastructure are enabling innovation at scale and reinforcing long-term profitability, noting the contribution of technology from start-ups.

“What we’re focusing on initially is AI, as that is the greatest opportunity for the century, that is the area where we’ve been able to create the biggest value for our company and we think there’s an opportunity for start-ups, especially as we’re providing a lot of infrastructure for AI in the form of our investment. We continually adopt that technology, and that technology has maintained our competitiveness and our profits over the years. Businesses don’t just have to make a profit; they have to introduce technology, because that maintains our competitive edge.”

Aramco operates some of the Middle East region’s most powerful supercomputers, including Dammam 7, and a number of NVIDIA Superpods, which help create, train and run AI models. Its industrial multi-agent AI, for example, reduces maintenance planning times from days to hours. Aramco is also taking a significant stake in HUMAIN, Saudi Arabia’s flagship AI company.

See more on Aramco's AI innovation here 

The SureTap Plug dual seal completion plug. (Image source: STATS Group)

Pipeline and isolation specialist STATS Group has launched the SureTap Plug, a dual seal completion plug engineered to maintain Double Block and Bleed (DBB) isolation in hot tapping and line stopping

STATS’ innovative approach fundamentally changes completion plug design by introducing true double block and bleed capability to the final stage of hot tapping operations and addresses long-standing completion safety concerns, while improving operational efficiency across the entire hot tapping workflow.

The new technology addresses a vulnerability at the final stage of hot tapping operations, where conventional completion plugs rely on a single O-ring seal that cannot be tested or verified under modern DBB safety criteria before temporary valves are removed.

While operators routinely establish fully tested DBB isolation during hot tapping and line stopping, that protection is typically not available at completion of the hot tap fitting. The inability to confirm seal integrity under modern DBB safety criteria or independently validate plug positioning has led to serious safety incidents in the pipeline industry.

The SureTap Plug is designed to eliminate this risk by introducing true DBB capability at completion. The plug features two independent compression seals with a testable intermediate annulus, allowing operators to verify both seal integrity and validate/correct plug positioning before removing temporary valves.

The hydraulically actuated plug incorporates multiple mechanical fail-safes. Sealing performance is significantly improved over conventional O-ring designs due to the seal profile and increased surface contact area, providing reliable isolation even on imperfect fitting flange inner diameters damaged during hot tapping operations.

The SureTap Plug is available in size range: 6" to 56", covering the majority of hot tapping applications. It meets IMCA double block and bleed requirements for subsea diver safety and is suitable for use on hydrocarbons, hydrogen and high-pressure liquid CO₂ piping systems.

In addition to enhanced safety, the SureTap Plug offers practical operational benefits including a reduced diameter design which allows flow around the plug during deployment, eliminating the need for bypass check valves.

Seals are protected during insertion and can pass through standard valve bores, while an optional dedicated hydraulic launcher allows hot tap machines to be demobilised earlier, reducing equipment hire time and costs.

With a minimum 25-year design life, the SureTap Plug is also suitable for permanent abandonment applications on aging assets.

Angus Bowie, STATS Group chief technology officer, said, “Operators invest in robust double block and bleed isolation during hot tapping and line stopping, only to accept a single, unverifiable barrier at completion. This contradiction has persisted because no alternative existed - until now.

“This verification eliminates the manual error causing mis-alignment or issues from external locking mechanisms guesswork that has plagued completion procedures for decades. Operators can now confirm, with tested certainty, that their pressure barrier is secure before exposing personnel to risk.”

GPU installation, Houston. (Image source: DUG)

DUG Technology (DUG) has deployed 82 new NVIDIA H200 machines, integrating some of the most advanced AI and compute-hardware technologies into the company’s high performance computing (HPC) ecosystem

The expansion adds an impressive 41 petaflops to DUG’s global supercomputing network and will support both growing client demand and future innovation.

Each machine delivers an order-of-magnitude performance uplift relative to DUG's fastest CPU-only hardware, further reducing the company's turnaround times across both testing and production.

Each machine is configured with:

• 8 × NVIDIA H200 GPUs (141 GB each)
• Dual AMD EPYC Turin CPUs
• 4 TB of system memory and 32 TB of local flash
• 100 Gbps networking

“This upgrade significantly increases our total compute power. This translates to even faster delivery of huge datasets and more computationally intensive workloads, from AI-inference applications, to advanced seismic processing and imaging workflows, including our revolutionary DUG Elastic MP-FWI Imaging technology,” said Harry McHugh, DUG’s chief information officer.

All 82 machines are now installed and operational, delivering results for both DUG’s services clients and DUG HPC Cloud users.

DUG is an ASX-listed technology company that provides innovative processing and storage solutions for real-world applications. It delivers proprietary software (DUG Insight), cloud-based HPC as-a-service (DUG HPC Cloud), immersion-cooling (DUG Cool), and edge-computing solutions (DUG Nomad), backed by bespoke support for technology onboarding.

Decades of experience in algorithm development, optimisation and HPC craft enables DUG to solve complex problems for clients. With offices in Perth, London, Houston, Kuala Lumpur, Abu Dhabi and Rio de Janeiro, DUG designs, owns and operates a network of some of the largest supercomputers on Earth.

The new detector combines advanced gas detection, lone worker protection, and radio-quality communication in one rugged device. (Image source: Blackline Safety)

Blackline Safety has launched G8, a new connected gas detector with a rugged, IP-67 rating designed to meet the most demanding industrial environments

Building on the company's G7 line, the new detector combines advanced gas detection, lone worker protection, and radio-quality communication in one rugged device that connects workers to each other, to their safety teams, and to the broader digital worksite — with real-time data streamed to the cloud.

The detector features swappable cartridges covering more than 20 gases, dual-band GNSS/GPS (L1/L5), delivering more reliable positioning in challenging environments, and access to ZoneAware geofencing in Blackline Live.

Offering enhanced speaker and mic technology it enables loud, clear worldwide radio functionality so crews can talk across sites, regions, or even countries; emergency voice calling – connecting workers directly with a live monitoring agent when an alert is triggered; text messaging and mass notifications; an internal full-range speaker delivering up to 1W of audio power, and optional RSM with up to 1.5W output to extend sound capability even further.

A 64-colour backlit display and 35-lumen, easy-access flashlight offer reliable visibility in low-light or confined spaces.

Live data is streamed from the device to Blackline’s data and analytics platform—Blackline Live—via the cloud. This gives safety leaders real-time visibility into worker status, gas readings, and site conditions, and it gives operations teams actionable insights to prevent incidents, reduce delays, and keep projects moving.

G8 is future-ready to plug into other digital platforms from human resource management systems (HRMS) to field service management tools to hot-permitting applications and more. It will continue to evolve with new capabilities, expanded integrations, and emerging technologies like AI-driven insights.

“G8 gives workers access to the tools and information they need to confidently get the job done and get home safe,” said Cody Slater, CEO and chair, Blackline Safety. “By unifying gas detection, real-time monitoring, and communication in one connected device, we’re delivering more than incremental improvement. We’re giving every worker a direct line to the people, data, systems and support they need to make faster, safer decisions.”