Space may be the final frontier, but this is the story of a startup using technology first developed by NASA back here on Earth, commercializing industrial-grade artificial intelligence software for fossil fuel exploration.

Founded in 2012, Beyond Limits Inc. has raised $20 million in a Series B round led by BP Ventures, the venture arm of BP PLC., formerly British Petroleum, the old-school multinational oil and gas company. The Bangalore, India-based company is using technology first developed by NASA’s Caltech deep space program to develop AI software. It combines human knowledge with machine learning to provide the energy sector with new levels of operational insight and process automation.

“Our goal is to create automated solutions that can think like humans and augment human capability,” Beyond Limits Chief Executive Officer AJ Abdallat told energy sector publication JWN. “We are the AI company that provides solutions for problems that cannot be solved using traditional approaches.”

As part of the deal, Beyond Limits will provide BP insight on how they locate and develop reservoirs, produces and refines crude oil and markets and supplies refined products. The company’s platform is said to support improvements in the speed and quality of decision-making, including managing operational risks and harnessing collective knowledge and experience.

“We augment machine to enterprise operational processes and teams with industrial-grade cognitive agents to enhance decision quality and velocity, manage operational risks and increase the utility value of the combined experience of [a] connected workforce,” the company’s website claims, with a “breakthrough cognitive computing technology [that] implements human-like reasoning software functions that perform deductive, inductive and abductive logic.”

Fossil fuels exploration may not be a popular cause among the citizens of the insanely overpriced real estate in Silicon Valley and San Francisco, but the $5 trillion industry still powers the world, even the making of the Teslas the venture capitalists on Sand Hill Road drive.

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