The ongoing trend toward Industry 4.0, coupled with the pressures of 2020’s climate have accelerated the urgency of AI. Industrial organizations lack AI expertise, but it’s become a matter of survival. This is driving the creation of a new category, “Industrial AI,” with startups like C3 and legacy industrial players like Aveva and AspenTech (NASDAQ: AZPN) racing to win.

In Aug., Aveva acquired an AI company to get a leg up, and AspenTech launched an entirely new business unit, AIoT Hub, to pivot its business focus entirely toward Industrial AI.

AspenTech took on the approach of operationalizing Industrial AI – including (un)supervised and reinforcement learning – for industrial customers. Their aim is to accelerate time to ROI by creating a centralized AI Hub to simplify data management and build a self-optimizing plant of the future without the traditionally needed AI technical skillset. It’s still early days for Industrial AI, and there’s much to be learned.

Frédéric Bastien discusses the challenges of this Industrial AI category, the different players (startups vs. legacy), and the specific AI technical approaches required for Industry 4.0.