At IFS Industrial X Unleashed in New York, IFS Nexus Black and Anthropic announced Resolve, the first in a new family of industrial AI solutions built on Anthropic’s Claude models.
The partnership combines IFS’s decades of experience in asset-heavy sectors with Anthropic’s focus on safe, reliable frontier AI. Resolve is designed to put industry-specific intelligence directly into the hands of frontline workers in aerospace and defence, construction and engineering, manufacturing, energy, utilities, natural resources and telecoms.
The gap they aim to close
IFS says the industries it serves are under pressure from ageing infrastructure, retiring expertise and supply-chain shocks, just as they face a surge in demand from re-industrialization and the build-out of AI data centers.
These sectors remain underserved by generic, consumer-grade AI aimed at white-collar roles, the company argues. Scalable, industrial-grade solutions built for asset-centric operations are urgently needed.
Garvan Doyle, Applied AI Lead at Anthropic, explained why his company sought a partner with deep physical-world experience. “Most of the progress in AI so far has happened in the digital domain, where it’s easy to simulate tasks like coding or financial modelling,” he told the audience. “But when you move into the physical world, things get much harder.”
What Resolve does
Powered by Claude, Resolve ingests multi-modal data such as video, audio, sensor readings and complex schematics to deliver real-time guidance to technicians.
According to IFS, it can predict and help prevent faults. It optimises technician scheduling and parts dispatch. It transcribes voice notes and automatically generates compliance paperwork.
Garvan Doyle told the audience exactly where the value lies: “The magic comes from the end-to-end system. It’s not about cramming every AI buzzword into a solution — it’s about driving real business outcomes.”
Early customer results
At William Grant & Sons, the distiller behind Grant’s whisky and Hendrick’s gin, engineers previously carried out 38% of repairs as emergencies rather than planned maintenance, IFS said.
Resolve now helps shift repairs to proactive work by analysing sound, video and sensor data. The company and the customer project annual savings of £8.4 million at a single site once the rollout is complete.
Gas and utilities firms using Resolve can restore power after major events or disasters up to 40% faster than without a comparable tool, IFS claims. Predictive analytics help pre-position crews, while image and video diagnostics speed on-site repairs.
Looking ahead
Garvan Doyle closed the session with a line that drew audible agreement from the room: “While AI might feel overhyped in office or knowledge work, I’d argue it’s underhyped in the industrial world — where the commercial and societal impact could be enormous.”
The partnership nudges the conversation for enterprises planning multi-decade investments in plants, grids and fleets. It has moved from whether to embed AI to which industrial-grade, safety-first version they are prepared to live with for the next thirty years.
