Norwegian Maritime AI Centre

The Norwegian Maritime AI Centre (MAI) is a national hub for research, innovation, and education in artificial intelligence for the maritime domain. The centre brings together Norway’s leading universities, research institutions, industry, and public authorities to make the maritime sector smarter, safer, and more sustainable through world-class AI research and applications.

Our mission is to operationalise AI across the maritime value chains, from ship design and construction to navigation, logistics, maintenance, and environmental management. By combining maritime expertise with cutting-edge AI, we aim to transform data into insight, insight into innovation, and innovation into impact.

More about MAI
Centre organization

Why maritime AI?

Global trade, ship transport, and operations at sea are the backbone of modern society. However, the maritime domain faces mounting challenges, including decarbonization, safety, and crew shortages. Artificial intelligence and digitalization offers new solutions to these challenges by enabling data-driven decisions, decision support, automation and autonomous operations.

MAI leverages the latest in foundation models, machine learning, and edge AI in combination with domain knowledge and conventional technology to create shared models, agents, algorithms and methods that benefit the entire maritime value chains.

Our approach

We connect research excellence with industrial and societal impact through three key pillars:

Technology Foundation – Preparing AI-ready data and developing models and algorithms tailored for the maritime domain.
Applications & Use Cases – Demonstrating the potential of maritime AI through practical projects with industry partners.
Open Innovation, Capacity Building & Scale-up – Building capacity, sharing knowledge, and training the next generation of maritime AI professionals.

Collaborative by design

MAI unites approximately 40 partners across academia, industry, and government — from shipbuilders and equipment suppliers to end users, service providers, regulators, and digital innovators. Additionally, the centre reaches out with several hundred companies that are members of industry clusters and organizations that can access events and shared results. MAI is one of the most comprehensive AI ecosystems in the global maritime domain.

Our open and collaborative approach ensures that knowledge and innovation flow between research and industry, accelerating the transition toward a greener, safer, and smarter maritime future.

Join the Voyage

Whether you are a student, researcher, or industry partner, there are many ways to get involved, from participating in use cases and student projects to attending workshops, webinars, and AI bootcamps.