The Physics Layer: Why AI Needs Real-World Engineering to Unlock Trillion-Dollar Industrial Value

About this episode

The episode explores the intersection of AI and real-world engineering, focusing on structural performance management and its industrial applications.

What do a floating barge the size of four aircraft carriers, a Shell refinery, and the future of energy resilience have in common? They all depend on knowing, with precision, how much life is left in the steel. In this episode of Augmented Ops, host Natan Linder sits down with Thomas Leurent, CEO and co-founder of Akselos, to unpack the often-overlooked world of structural performance management and why it might be the most important form of physical AI you've never heard of. Thomas shares how Akselos helped Shell unlock over half a billion dollars in value on a single FPSO by using physics-based digital twins to skip a costly dry dock. He explains the technology behind it: a proprietary approach that runs structural simulations 100,000x faster than traditional finite element analysis by blending machine learning with physics, built over 20+ years since the technology was pulled out of MIT. The conversation goes deep on what physical AI actually means in industrial settings, why hallucination is simply not an option in high-stakes environments, the role of humans in process industries (especially in emergency scenarios like what's unfolding in the GCC), and how data sharing — or…

People in this episode

Host: Natan Linder

Guest: Thomas Leurent

Topics covered

• AI in engineering
• structural performance management
• digital twins
• industrial value
• energy resilience
• data sharing

Keywords

• physical AI
• machine learning
• finite element analysis
• cost savings
• simulation technology
• data sharing
• energy transition

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Akselos, Shell

Places: GCC, offshore wind, energy resilience, FPSO

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