Silvio Rodriguez and Alex Helmer co-founded Jungle AI in 2017 | Image credit: Jungle AI
In the vast landscape of wind farms, how can each turbine always perform optimally?
This is a business challenge that plagues all energy companies at the forefront of the energy transition.
The biggest challenge for energy companies is to avoid machine underperformance and possible downtime.
While energy companies grappled with this challenge, Dutch-Portuguese AI startup Jungle AI was building technology to improve the operational performance of these capital-intensive assets.
Founded in 2017 by Alexander Helmer, Silvio Rodriguez and Tim Koch, Jungle AI has realized that despite the increasing complexity of industrial machines, the technology to operate and understand them has not kept up. rice field.
The co-founders realized that the conflict between human understanding of technology and the increasing complexity of processes would prevent machines from reaching their full potential.
data challenges
All businesses and industries face data challenges where there is always a gap between what businesses have done with data and what they could have done.
For the Jungle AI co-founders, the energy industry’s challenges were inherently data challenges and could be addressed with data analytics technology.
“This problem exists in almost every industry, but Jungle AI is focused on industries that are critical to a sustainable future,” said Silvio Rodriguez, co-founder and CIO of Jungle AI. I’m here.
Many industries face significant data challenges due to the complexity of the data environment, he said.
Rodriguez says modern machines are becoming more sophisticated, so they also struggle to access clean, centralized data.
This leaves companies unable to do proper monitoring and advanced analytics. As a result, machines underperform or sit idle, leaving a ton of value behind.
Overcoming this data challenge requires expertise and advanced technology solutions that ensure “data collection, processing and analysis,” Rodriguez argues.
Combining data challenges with AI solutions
AI seems to be everywhere. From providing easy access to the apps you use most to smart parking, AI is making a big difference.
So it should come as no surprise that this is an AI solution that can help overcome the data challenges faced by industries with assets such as wind turbines.
Solutions built by Jungle AI use deep learning models based on the transformer architecture to learn how machines should behave under all possible circumstances.
“This normal behavior creates a much-needed baseline that operators use to benchmark what the machine is actually doing,” said Rodriguez.
Once baselines are established, Jungle AI customers will be able to monitor machine performance and health in real time with a web tool called Canopy.
Dutch and Portuguese startups don’t stop there. We also provide access to the model via API for customers who want to model the results into their existing workflows.
We also have a team of data scientists who work with customers to better understand their assets and solve critical problems.
For the layperson, Jungle AI can help businesses with predictive maintenance, reducing downtime and maintenance costs.
The company’s AI models work in real-time to predict equipment failures before they occur, helping one customer predict wind turbine gearbox failures weeks ahead of other systems.
“This allowed the customer to order spare parts and plan repairs without having to shut down the turbine during high winds,” says Silvio.
Challenge to Raise AI Awareness
There has been a lot of talk about generative AI since the debut of OpenAI’s GPT-3, but the impact AI is already having on many industries cannot be overemphasized.
Silvio said the latest AI developments, including the release of generative AI tools, have increased public attention to the world of AI.
But he worries that the ongoing debate around generative AI will lead to a one-sided view of AI.
So how should we look at AI? He said AI is a broad and evolving topic, and its scope depends on the problem being solved.
The biggest challenge for Jungle AI was also getting companies to realize the benefits of using AI to optimize their operations.
“It was hard to convince them of the value of our solution,” Silvio jokes.
He said the poor quality of data from equipment and machines only made it difficult to develop accurate predictive models.
“We had to develop a tool to integrate data from different systems and make sure the data was properly formatted and cleansed before being used in analytical models,” he added. .
Another challenge, he says, was finding and hiring the right people with the necessary skills and expertise to build and deploy AI and ML solutions in an industrial environment.
Amidst all the hype about generative AI and its impact on jobs, the lack of the right people and awareness is probably on the decline.
Scaling with AWS
Like many emerging AI startups, Jungle AI uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) to quickly and efficiently build and deploy its platform.
Silvio says that with AWS, they have access to a highly scalable infrastructure that can accommodate their growing customer base and the amount of data they need to process.
“AWS offers robust security features and compliance certifications, which are important for companies operating in regulated industries,” he says.
Amazon Web Services is also playing a key role in connecting Jungle AI with major energy companies around the world.
The startup is also part of the AWS Clean Energy Accelerator, a program aimed at accelerating the adoption and development of clean energy technologies by individuals and organizations.
“They provide the much-needed reliability and network,” said Silvio, adding that it was the impetus needed to expand the company.
He also says that he has been able to co-innovate with mentors and AWS experts to increase user autonomy.
Jungle AI CEO Arnoud Kamerbeek will be in attendance as the AWS Summit returns to Amsterdam for the first time in three years on June 1st to discuss not only progress but also how startups can further accelerate the energy transition. increase.
Interested in learning more about the energy transition with Jungle AI? Check out our presentation at the Startup Loft Theater during AWS Summit Amsterdam.
AI forever
There is no better way to say it, but Jungle AI stands out as the platform that will forever lead the way in AI ideas.
AI is envisioned as a cross-cutting technology that will transform lives, and Jungle AI plays a key role in enabling the energy transition with its AI tools.
By extending the life of renewable energy sources and detecting problems before they occur, Jungle AI not only protects these capital-intensive resources, but also increases their value.
Last September, it raised €5 million in Series A funding to further accelerate this transformation.
At the time, the startup was planning to fill 12 new positions, but Silvio said there was only one opening for a DevOps engineer.
Some businesses have impact, and some have impact on society. Jungle AI clearly belongs to the latter, with its business value derived from its direct and indirect impact on the planet.
If a renewable energy company’s assets are doing well, then Jungle AI’s models are likely to work.
AWS Summit Amsterdam 2023
Want to learn more about the benefits of the cloud? Or want to talk to a cloud expert? Visit the AWS Summit on June 1 at RAI in Amsterdam to learn about platform capabilities and hear from AWS experts. Get free 1:1 support and find more resources. Also, don’t forget to join his AWS for a pre-summit drink on the rooftop on May 31st.
