Published: Oct 03, 2017
Focus:
Growth Capital
Maven funding will enable Cognitive to develop its suite of third generation petroleum geoscience software modules
Maven and specialist early-stage investor Enso Ventures have invested £2 million in Cognitive Geology, to support the continued growth of the business.
The funding will enable Cognitive to develop its suite of third-generation petroleum geoscience software modules, which are designed to help geologists find, appraise and develop conventional and unconventional oil & gas reserves, both onshore and offshore. 
Cognitive Geology Senior Management Team
Founded in 2014 by Geologist Luke Johnson, Edinburgh-based Cognitive recently launched ‘Hutton’, its first advanced geological data analysis tool. Petroleum geologists analysing the subsurface have to deal with significant uncertainty as they map an oil reservoir, plan drilling and production, and ultimately look to maximise oil recovery. That translates into significant uncertainty in terms of committing investment. Hutton plugs into the major software platforms used throughout the oil and gas industry including Petrel™ and JewelSuite™, by extracting progressive trends from complex geological datasets to enable geologists to make more informed decisions throughout the life cycle of a reservoir.
The geoscience software market is worth an annual estimated $4.5 Billion, and is expected to double in size in the next few years, as out-dated software architectures are replaced by the next generation of technology. With rising costs, falling exploration success rates, and a low oil price, there is significant market demand for innovative, third-generation software.
Maven funding will allow the company to accelerate the roll out of Hutton, which uses patented Trendware™ technology to emulate the behaviour of an experienced geologist. Its ability to rapidly build multiple reservoir scenarios and provide users with superior visualisation capability is a significant advancement on existing solutions which are based on legacy software.
“Luke is a true entrepreneur, having created Hutton to tackle the challenges he encountered as a geologist responsible for high value upstream oil and gas projects. By providing geologists with the most robust geological explanations for their data so they can make more informed decisions, Cognitive is directly addressing a market need. This gives the firm its edge over competitors and offers great potential for success. Luke has assembled a very capable and skilled technical team as well as an experienced advisory board, and we look forward to helping the team execute their exciting plans.”
David Milroy, Investment Director at Maven
“The oil industry, one of the first to adopt 3D visualisation and high performance computing, once led software innovation. Today it has fallen behind gaming & cloud technologies. As geologists and technologists ourselves, our mission is to take advantage of modern software architectures to improve the efficiency of our global peers by equipping them with the best software possible for the complex tasks they face daily. To that end, our customer feedback has been overwhelmingly positive so far.
Today’s low oil prices increase the requirement for better technology, and looking ahead, both Maven and Enso, were quick to recognise the fortuitous timing of our company growth. This investment round will provide us the capital to scale our Edinburgh headquarters and position ourselves as innovators of third-generation software solutions for the energy services sector."
Luke Johnson, CEO and Co-founder of Cognitive
