Austin, TX-based AI company Novi Labs Inc. has acquired energy data analytics provider ShaleProfile BV for an undisclosed amount, the company said on Jan. 19. Following the closed transaction on Dec. 29, ShaleProfile became a fully owned subsidiary of Novi Labs. 

Based in the Netherlands, ShaleProfile is a privately held startup that develops visualization and analytics solutions for the U.S. shale industry. Enno Peters, CEO and founder of the company, will join Novi Labs as general manager of the data division. 

“Combining the most up-to-date and accurate production and completion data with highly sophisticated well-spacing and subsurface data is unique,” Peters said. “Geologists, completion, reservoir, and production engineers now have a single source for complete data and sophisticated analytics.”

Novi Labs will fully integrate ShaleProfile’s data aggregation pipeline with its AI-driven modeling and forecasting software. ShaleProfile will provide high quality production and completion data for Novi’s self-service machine learning platform, enabling accurate economic forecasts that drive investment decisions, the company said.

The Data to Decision workflow will allow users to build analytical datasets, machine learning driven models, and leverage those models to make high consequence business decisions.

“The culture and vision of our two organizations could not be more aligned,” Scott Sherwood, CEO of Novi Labs, said. “This acquisition is about providing our customers with innovative and field-proven technologies for improving shale production economics.”

Novi’s move into the data realm follows its commitment to actively ensure data quality, according to Novi president and founder Jon Ludwig. The company found that the public data it aggregated varied in quality, forcing it to build various data quality checking mechanisms into it software workflows.

“The conclusion was reached that we had to take a more active role in ensuring data quality, making sure that data used in modeling pipelines was accurate, timely, and complete,” Ludwig said. “The thesis is simple – if the data was of higher quality, the results generated from our software would also be better.”

According to Ludwig, an extensive due diligence process with ShaleProfile showed its data “was as good or better than any other data offered in the market” and, ultimately, a better option for Novi Labs than building its own data aggregation framework.

“If the ShaleProfile data were integrated into a pre-built Novi model, customers could spend a lot more time analyzing and recommending and a lot less time fixing and preparing data,” he said. “We could build a stronger value proposition around a fully integrated workflow that started with our data, unlocking significant efficiencies for our customers by reducing chances of error and improving overall results.”

Forward-looking operators and energy investors are leveraging AI-driven digital workflows to make higher-quality investment decisions. Novi’s AI platform replaces the current outdated methods for A&D evaluation, asset optimization, and energy investment analysis. This industry-first capability allows customers to complete data to decision workflows in a matter of hours versus weeks and months.