Petrobras AI Infrastructure, $8 B Cost-Cut Goal, Elea Digital 30 MVA Data Center, and SLB Delfi Deployment (2023-2026)

AI Application Scale-Up, Petrobras Enterprise Integration and 15% Downtime Reduction

In 2025, Petrobras has shifted its artificial intelligence strategy from isolated, upstream-focused projects to a fully integrated, enterprise-wide deployment designed to drive measurable efficiency gains. This evolution marks a transition from using AI for specialized scientific problems to embedding it within core business processes, from maintenance to corporate workflows, supported by a deliberate build-out of foundational digital infrastructure. The company’s progress is now measured not just in computational speed but in direct financial and operational outcomes, such as significant reductions in production downtime and operational costs.

Petrobras Shift from Siloed to Integrated AI

• Between 2021 and 2024, Petrobras’s AI initiatives were largely concentrated on solving complex upstream challenges, demonstrating technical viability. A key achievement from this period was the porting of linear solvers to NVIDIA hardware, which accelerated reservoir simulation by up to 4 x, proving the value of high-performance computing (HPC) in exploration.
• The period from 2025 onward represents a strategic pivot toward enterprise-level integration and operationalization. In March 2025, the company announced the development of a new generative AI model to accelerate maintenance processes for oil rigs and refineries, moving AI out of the research lab and onto physical assets.
• This integration was further solidified with the internal launch of Chat Petrobras, an application built on Azure Open AI Service to streamline workflows for the company’s 110, 000 employees, indicating a commitment to embedding AI into daily corporate functions.

Quantifiable Impact of AI and Digital Twins

• Unlike earlier phases focused on technical proofs of concept, the current strategy emphasizes quantifiable business results. The deployment of AI-powered digital twins has become a significant value driver, with one application increasing oil production by approximately 1% and another deployment across 11 refineries delivering $154 million in savings.
• Fleet-scale AI deployments by partner Shape Digital across assets producing over 25% of Brazil’s national output have yielded a 15% reduction in production downtime. These deployments have also cut greenhouse gas emissions by 5-12%, with a rapid payback period of 8-14 months, linking digital initiatives directly to both financial performance and sustainability goals.

$109 B CAPEX Plan, Petrobras Digital and Decarbonization Investments

Petrobras underpins its digital transformation with substantial, long-term capital commitments detailed in its strategic business plans, directing funds toward the foundational infrastructure required for large-scale AI. This financial strategy connects digital investment directly to the company’s core objectives of achieving low production costs and low emissions, with AI positioned as a critical enabler for both. The allocations demonstrate a clear intention to fund not only the technology itself but also the broader energy transition initiatives it supports.

Petrobras Strategic Plan Capital Allocation

• The Business Plan 2026-2030, approved in November 2025, outlines a total CAPEX of $109 billion. A central component of this plan is a cost-cutting target of approximately $8 billion, where AI-driven optimizations in both CAPEX and OPEX are expected to be primary contributors.
• This is complemented by the 2025-2029 Business Plan, which dedicates US$16.3 billion to energy transition initiatives. This includes a US$1.3 billion decarbonization fund aimed at projects that reduce the company’s carbon footprint, many of which rely on digital monitoring and optimization technologies.
• The direct financial impact of these digital initiatives is already projected in the company’s forecasts. Petrobras anticipates a $6/barrel reduction in the Total Cost of Produced Oil (TCPO), a key metric reflecting the efficiency gains achieved through technology adoption.

R&D Investments in Energy Transition Tech

• Petrobras leverages its regulatory R&D commitments to fund tangible technology projects that align with its digital and energy transition goals. In September 2025, the company announced a BRL 130 million co-investment with WEG and Statkraft to operationalize the largest onshore wind turbine in the Americas.
• This investment, sourced from R&D clauses with Brazil’s National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels (ANP), demonstrates a strategy of applying mandated research funds to projects that build expertise in renewable energy and its associated digital control systems, similar to strategies seen at peers like Equinor.

Table: Petrobras Strategic Investment and R&D Commitments

Oil & Gas AI/ML Market Poised for Near-Doubling by 2035
The AI and ML market in Oil and Gas is projected to nearly double, from $2.70 billion in 2025 to $5.39 billion by 2035. This sustained growth trajectory signals an aggressive adoption of advanced analytics and automation across the energy value chain.

(Source: Precedence Research — via AI and ML in Oil and Gas Market Size to Hit USD 5.39 Billion by 2035)

Petrobras 4 Key Infrastructure and Expertise Partnerships (2023-2026)

Petrobras executes its AI strategy through a deliberate network of partnerships that provide essential infrastructure, specialized software platforms, and operational expertise. These collaborations with global technology leaders are not peripheral but central to its digital transformation, enabling the company to build and control its computational foundation while leveraging best-in-class tools for exploration and production. This approach allows Petrobras to accelerate AI deployment at scale, a model also pursued by other national oil companies like ADNOC.

Foundational Cloud and HPC Partners

• In October 2025, Petrobras partnered with Elea Digital to develop Latin America’s largest AI-driven data center. This 30 megavolt-amperes (MVA) facility, featuring advanced liquid cooling, will host Petrobras’s supercomputers and is a cornerstone of its strategy to own the core infrastructure for processing critical exploration and reservoir data.
• This move was complemented by a tender won by Atos Bull in May 2025 for data processing and storage capabilities, securing the hardware and services needed to host the company’s high-performance computing systems and AI workloads.
• The long-term, five-year contract with SLB, signed in July 2023, remains a central pillar of this strategy. The enterprise-wide deployment of SLB’s Delfi™ digital platform integrates AI and machine learning to optimize E&P workflows in the cloud, forming the primary software layer for subsurface analysis.

Operational and R&D Collaborations

• To execute its deepwater strategy, Petrobras awarded key contracts to Halliburton in October 2025 for completion and stimulation services in the Búzios, Atapu, and Sépia offshore fields. This highlights a continued reliance on specialized partners for complex offshore operations.
• The company is also fostering collaborations on next-generation digital platforms, such as its work with ESSS, Intelie, and UFAL announced in May 2026. This partnership aims to create a vendor-agnostic well integrity platform using digital twin technology, designed to unify data from disparate systems and improve operational safety.

Table: Petrobras Key AI and Digital Partnerships

Brazil-Centric Deepwater Focus, Petrobras AI Infrastructure Rollout

Petrobras’s AI and digital investments are geographically concentrated in Brazil, designed to reinforce its world-leading position in pre-salt deepwater exploration and production. By building its core digital infrastructure, including a massive AI-focused data center, within Brazil, the company is creating a domestic hub for computational power. This strategy not only supports its most valuable assets but also fosters national technological sovereignty and reduces reliance on international data infrastructure.

Concentration in Brazilian Pre-Salt Basins

• Nearly all of Petrobras’s significant AI-related partnerships and projects in 2025 are directly tied to enhancing operations in Brazil’s offshore basins. The contracts with Halliburton for the Búzios, Atapu, and Sépia fields and the fleet-wide AI deployment with Shape Digital target the company’s most productive pre-salt assets.
• The period between 2021 and 2024 saw the establishment of digital foundations, such as the SLB Delfi™ contract, to support these operations. The years 2025 and beyond represent a physical manifestation of this strategy, with the construction of dedicated digital infrastructure on Brazilian soil.

National Data Infrastructure Development

• The partnership with Elea Digital to build a 30 MVA AI data center in Brazil is the clearest signal of this domestic focus. This facility will provide the in-country computational power needed for processing seismic data and running complex reservoir simulations, which are core to Petrobras’s competitive advantage in deepwater.
• This localization of critical infrastructure provides Petrobras with greater control, security, and lower latency for its most data-intensive operations, a strategic advantage compared to relying on cloud regions hosted overseas. The strategy mirrors similar national-champion approaches to critical infrastructure seen in other sectors, such as Next Era‘s grid investments in the U.S.

AI Technology Maturity, Petrobras Moves to Generative AI and Digital Twins

Petrobras has successfully evolved its AI technology from specialized, high-performance computing applications to commercially deployed, enterprise-scale solutions that deliver verifiable business impact. The company has moved beyond technical validation in reservoir simulation and is now applying more advanced forms of AI, including generative AI and digital twins, to optimize maintenance, production, and refining operations, marking a significant step in technology maturity.

Early Focus on Upstream HPC Applications

• The initial phase of AI adoption at Petrobras (2021-2024) was characterized by the use of HPC and machine learning to solve complex upstream scientific problems. The collaboration with NVIDIA, which achieved up to a 4 x faster time-to-solution for reservoir modeling, was a key milestone that validated the technical potential of AI for core E&P activities.
• During this period, the primary goal was to prove that AI could accelerate computationally intensive tasks and generate more accurate subsurface models, establishing the scientific credibility needed for broader investment and adoption.

2025 Shift to Enterprise-Scale Deployment

• The period from 2025 onward shows a clear shift toward deploying AI at commercial scale with a focus on measurable ROI. The development of a generative AI model for rig maintenance in March 2025 shows the technology is being applied to solve practical, operational bottlenecks.
• The successful application of digital twins is another marker of maturity. The deployment across 11 refineries that saved $154 million and the use case that increased production by 1% demonstrate that AI is no longer just a research tool but a core component of asset management and optimization, a trend also seen at integrated energy companies like Shell and Exxon Mobil.

SWOT Analysis, Petrobras AI Strategy Execution and Market Position

Petrobras’s AI strategy capitalizes on its dominant deepwater position and significant investment capacity to drive efficiency and solidify its competitive advantage. However, the execution of this strategy is exposed to risks from public policy shifts, dependency on technology partners, and the complexities of integrating advanced digital systems across a vast operational footprint. The company’s ability to navigate these factors will determine its success in translating AI investment into sustained market leadership.

Table: SWOT Analysis for Petrobras AI Initiatives (2021-2025)

Petrobras Scenario, Control of AI Infrastructure and Service Export (2026-2027)

The most critical indicator for Petrobras’s long-term AI strategy is whether its massive investment in dedicated data infrastructure with Elea Digital translates into greater operational autonomy and creates a new opportunity to export its digital deepwater services. Success in this area would transform Petrobras from a consumer of digital technology into a provider of specialized industrial AI solutions, fundamentally altering its market position.

• If this happens: Petrobras successfully integrates its supercomputers, proprietary models, and the SLB Delfi™ platform into the new Elea data center, achieving a unified, high-speed data architecture across its entire E&P value chain.
• Watch this: Monitor announcements for the operational “go-live” date of the Elea data center and track any new, large-scale R&D projects that are explicitly hosted there. A leading indicator would be a significant increase in Petrobras’s hiring of data scientists, AI engineers, and cloud architects in Brazil, signaling a strategic intent to internalize expertise and control its digital destiny.
• These could be happening: Petrobras may begin to develop and deploy more proprietary analytics modules in-house, reducing its functional reliance on third-party software for specific competitive domains like subsurface characterization. The company could also start packaging its AI-driven exploration models and digital twin solutions as a commercial service, offering its proven deepwater expertise to other national and independent oil companies in non-competing regions, thereby monetizing its technology investment.

The questions your competitors are already asking

This report covers one angle of Petrobras’s digital strategy execution. The questions that matter most depend on your work.

• Competitor AI infrastructure projects oil and gas
• ROI case studies AI in upstream oil production
• SLB Delfi vs Halliburton iEnergy platform
• Petrobras digital services export potential

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