Business Wire

Maana and Aramco Trading Company Launch AI Application to Optimize Maritime Fleet and Shipping Operations

2.3.2021 17:00:00 EET | Business Wire | Press release

Share

Aramco Trading Company (ATC) and Maana today announced the launch of Fanar, the first Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven maritime fleet optimization application on Microsoft Azure purpose-built for the oil and gas industry.

Fanar combines the expertise of ATC and the Maana Q knowledge technology. It unifies maritime fleet optimization, planning, management and shipment scheduling on a single platform. The application:

  • systematically integrates all data sources, constraints, and business rules
  • automatically optimizes schedules across the fleet with a single click
  • rapidly processes “what if” scenarios for better insights
  • dynamically incorporates historic performance to generate new predictions

Fanar has been tested daily by ATC since June 2020.

“Collaboration between Maana and Microsoft helps us, through Fanar, to drive down costs,” said Ibrahim Q. Al Buainain, President and CEO of Aramco Trading Company. “Fanar enables us to optimize all local decisions across our maritime shipping and logistics workflows.”

Based on any given a set of cargoes and fleet of vessels, Fanar can determine how to ship the cargo in a way that minimizes cost, optimizes fleet utilization and maximizes business value. It continuously computes dynamic criteria such as vessel locations and actuals; terminals and ports status and congestion; bunkering locations, costs and quality; vessel cleaning; time and spot chartering costs; weather; risk of piracy, terrorism or war; risk of labor and social unrest resulting in closures; epidemics; shipping routes; canal fees; charter party specifications; Contracts of Affreightment (COA); commodity prices; special considerations; business rules and more.

“Under the hood of Fanar is the digital twin of ATC’s global maritime operations,” said Babur Ozden, founder and CEO of Maana. “It is the largest digital twin in the world on Microsoft Azure for global maritime shipments of oil and gas, holding the history, present state and future simulations of billions of barrels of petroleum products, thousands of voyages and vessels.”

“Maana is a founding technology member of Energy Core, a global Microsoft initiative dedicated to digital transformation in the energy sector, through the power of artificial intelligence and cloud technologies,” said Darryl Willis, Corporate Vice President of Energy at Microsoft. “Fanar is a great example of how Maana and ATC are using Microsoft Azure for supply chain optimization.”

The Fanar application is available to Azure customers. For more information, please contact Fanar@maana.io

About Aramco Trading Company

Aramco Trading Company (ATC) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Saudi Aramco and is responsible for handling Saudi Aramco’s domestic and international supplies to worldwide markets. ATC’s mission is to integrate Saudi Aramco’s global Downstream assets to maximize profitability while ensuring Saudi Aramco’s systems are optimized and reliably balanced.

About Maana

Maana organizes human expertise, enterprise knowhow and industrial data into digital knowledge to assist subject matter experts at critical operation affecting the global economy.

To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.

Contact information

Mandi Browning
mandi@maana.io

About Business Wire

For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.

Subscribe to releases from Business Wire

Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Latest releases from Business Wire

Beacon Acquires Haize Labs to Power AI for the Real Economy17.9.2026 17:30:00 EEST | Press release

Beacon Software (Beacon), the first centralized AI holding company, today announced that it has acquired Haize Labs, an AI reliability company that tests and safeguards AI agents for real-world deployment. The Haize Labs team will join Beacon to form its Applied AI Research Group, with co-founder and CEO Leonard Tang joining as VP of AI Research to lead the AI operating system that is deployed across Beacon’s companies. Beacon believes that the fastest way to bring AI to the traditional economy is through the software businesses that essential industries already use and trust, equipping them with AI infrastructure. Beacon acquires these businesses for long-term growth and connects them to a centralized AI operating system that compounds with each additional acquisition and industry. The addition of the Haize Labs team will strengthen this centralized technology platform, which provides shared engineering, AI, product and go-to-market capabilities to Beacon’s portfolio of 45 software co

TIMELAB Develops OEM/ODM Hair Straightener Reaching 200°C at All Three Measured Points in 15 Seconds17.9.2026 17:00:00 EEST | Press release

TIMELAB Co., Ltd., a Japanese beauty-appliance OEM/ODM provider, has developed a hair straightener for OEM/ODM customization for international hair care brands and professional markets. In testing at 230 V with a 260°C setting, all three measured plate locations reached at least 200°C after 15 seconds. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260914187865/en/ Three-Point Plate Testing A European-market development unit with a maximum setting of 260°C was tested at 230 V. Fifteen seconds after power-on, readings at the front, center and rear were 212.5°C, 227.5°C and 200.0°C, respectively. From around 60 seconds onward, temperature differences among the three points narrowed, indicating a stable trend. Precision Temperature Control An NTC sensor inside the metal ceramic heater (MCH) detects temperature. A microcontroller (MCU) reads the signal and adjusts heater output. Upper and lower MCH heaters are controlled indepen

Earnix Brings Agentic AI to the Decisions That Drive Insurance Performance17.9.2026 16:09:00 EEST | Press release

Earnix today announced the introduction of Agent Hub, a curated catalog of insurance-specific AI agents and apps within Earnix AIOS — the AI Orchestration System powering Earnix’s pricing and rating, underwriting, and customer engagement solutions. Agent Hub brings agentic AI directly into these solutions, enabling more intelligent workflows and strengthening the high-stakes decisions that shape pricing, underwriting, customer engagement, growth, and profitability. In an increasingly turbulent insurance environment, the useful life of an insurance decision is getting shorter. Risk and market conditions are changing faster, making growth, profitability, and portfolio performance harder to manage. AI is increasing the speed and scope of what insurers can analyze, recommend, and increasingly act on — but as intelligence moves closer to action, the standard for governance, explainability, and accountability also rises. For insurers, that shift has direct implications for both financial per

Medisca Launches Global Peptide Division17.9.2026 16:07:00 EEST | Press release

Medisca today announced the launch of Medisca Peptides, a dedicated global division focused on expanding access to API-grade peptides and building an integrated peptide platform for pharmaceutical and personalized medicine markets worldwide. As the peptide landscape evolves, Medisca is proactively building the capabilities and infrastructure needed to support API-grade peptides within applicable regulatory frameworks. The launch represents a significant long-term commitment to peptides, including the expansion of Medisca’s portfolio, strategic manufacturing relationships, and the pharmaceutical infrastructure needed to support the category’s growth. It also signals Medisca’s ambition to become a leading force in the next generation of peptide innovation. For Medisca, the opportunity is familiar. More than 35 years ago, the company was founded to help close the gap between the pharmaceutical standards compounders needed and the quality ingredients they could readily access. Today, as pe

Elliptic Launches Its Decode Agent to Answer On-Chain Risk Questions and Shows Its Work17.9.2026 16:00:00 EEST | Press release

Elliptic, the global leader in on-chain risk, today launched Decode, an AI agent built on Elliptic’s intelligence platform. The Decode agent answers natural-language questions about cryptoasset addresses and their exposure in seconds, and returns the evidence behind every answer. Compliance and investigations teams need answers to questions nobody planned for. Getting them out of the data is now a specialist skill, so the questions wait for someone who has it, or go unasked. Meanwhile illicit actors move at machine speed, and agents are starting to sit on both sides of a payment. General-purpose AI assistants can produce an answer. They cannot show where it came from. A fluent response with nothing behind it cannot be put in front of a second-line reviewer, an auditor, or a regulator. “The market is full of AI that asks to be trusted. That is not good enough when someone asks how you reached a decision,” said Jackson Hull, CTO at Elliptic. “We published the Elliptic Standard last week

In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.

Visit our pressroom
World GlobeA line styled icon from Orion Icon Library.HiddenA line styled icon from Orion Icon Library.Eye