Amphitrite Rides AI Wave to Boost Maritime Shipping, Ocean Cleanup With Real-Time Weather Prediction and Simulation

Overview

France-based startup Amphitrite fuses satellite data and AI to simulate and predict oceanic currents and weather, using the NVIDIA AI and Earth-2 platforms. Its fine-tuned, three-kilometer-scale AI models (dubbed ORCAst), trained on NVIDIA GPUs, analyze ocean current, wave, and wind data to help ships optimize routes and reduce fuel consumption and carbon emissions. Amphitrite trains and runs its AI models using NVIDIA H100 GPUs on premises and in the cloud, building on the FourCastNet model from Earth-2. Fusing AI and satellite imagery, Amphitrite can improve the accuracy of global ocean current analyses by up to 2x compared with traditional methods. A case study along the Mediterranean Sea found the NVIDIA-powered Amphitrite fine-scale routing solution helped reduce one shipping line's carbon emissions by 10%. Shipping and oceanographic companies using Amphitrite's solutions include CMA-CGM, Genavir, Louis Dreyfus Armateurs, and Orange Marine; the company also works with an NGO to track and remove plastic pollution in the Pacific Ocean.

The challenge

Traditional weather forecasting technologies have relied on numerical modeling and computational fluid dynamics, which are harder to apply to oceans because oceanic currents often deal with nonlinear physics, and there is less observational data available on the ocean than on atmospheric weather.

The solution

Amphitrite fuses satellite data (from NASA, the European Space Agency including its Sentinel-3 satellite, and the SWOT mission) with AI, using the NVIDIA AI and Earth-2 platforms. Its fine-tuned, three-kilometer-scale AI models, dubbed ORCAst, trained on NVIDIA GPUs, analyze one ocean variable at a time (such as surface currents, waves, and wind) to help ships optimize routes and reduce fuel consumption and carbon emissions. Amphitrite trains and runs its AI models using NVIDIA H100 GPUs on premises and in the cloud, building on the FourCastNet model from Earth-2 to develop its computer vision models for wave prediction.

Reported business value

Fusing AI and satellite imagery, Amphitrite can improve the accuracy of global ocean current analyses by up to 2x compared with traditional methods. A case study along the Mediterranean Sea found the NVIDIA-powered Amphitrite fine-scale routing solution helped reduce one shipping line's carbon emissions by 10%. Shipping and oceanographic companies using Amphitrite's solutions include CMA-CGM, Genavir, Louis Dreyfus Armateurs, and Orange Marine; the company also works with an NGO to track and remove plastic pollution in the Pacific Ocean.