PHOENIX, AZ – May 8, 2025 – Cognite, the global leader in industrial AI, today announced the appointment of Torgrim Aas, Jan Eivind Danielsen, and Thorkild Stray as the inaugural class of Cognite Fellows. This landmark initiative underscores Cognite's deepening commitment to empowering customers with cutting-edge industrial Data and AI solutions while simultaneously building enduring know-how and competencies.
These exceptional individuals represent the vanguard of Industrial Data and AI innovation, driving the energy transition and championing responsible, scalable industrialization on a global scale — areas where Cognite continues to see increasing demand and deliver tangible results for its expanding customer base. Establishing the Cognite Fellows Program signifies the company's ongoing investment in top-tier talent and its dedication to fostering a vibrant expert community that directly benefits customers and partners.
Cognite Founder Dr. John Markus Lervik emphasized the significant contributions of the Cognite Fellows, stating, "Our first three Cognite Fellows have profoundly impacted our customers' success and are central to Cognite's competitive edge. Their work has directly boosted customer value through increased production, decreased downtime, and enhanced scalability. Innovation with the latest tech stack, driven by innovations that are meaningful on the ground within the industrial sector, is our calling, and our inaugural class well passes that threshold of requirement."
The Cognite Fellows Program recognizes individuals who embody more than just deep expertise; it celebrates their personal impact and overall contribution to the organization and its mission. Prospective Fellows are nominated by peers and evaluated based on their deep technology knowledge, creative problem-solving, innovative thinking, and technical leadership in guiding and mentoring teams and customers. Cognite Fellows must demonstrate the ability to anticipate future trends to develop impactful solutions, while being a personification of Cognite values, earning high regard across the company:
- Torgrim Aas combines deep industrial domain experience with edge-to-cloud industrial data expertise. He has led Cognite's most challenging customer projects, showcasing exceptional technical depth and creativity, leading to significant measurable business results.
- Jan Eivind Danielsen has a unique understanding of the industrial value chain, from capital projects to operations. Combined with his thought leadership, he has extended the use of Cognite technologies across the end-to-end industrial value chain, establishing a new industry standard.
- Thorkild Stray has brought over two decades of experience from a variety of large-scale, real-time distributed software systems into asset-intensive industry, with a unique grit to make it work in mission-critical environments, while inspiring and mentoring colleagues and customers.
"ARC congratulates Cognite on their launch of the Cognite Fellows Program, as Cognite sets the pace as the fastest growing cloud-native industrial data platform,*" said Janice Abel, Principal Analyst, ARC Advisory Group.
The introduction of the Cognite Fellows marks another significant milestone in the company's journey, reflecting its strong momentum, commitment to innovation, and unwavering focus on delivering transformative value to its customers and partners worldwide.
About Cognite
Cognite makes GenAI work for industry. Leading energy, manufacturing, and power & renewables enterprises choose Cognite to deliver secure, trustworthy, and real-time data to transform their asset-heavy operations to be safer, more sustainable, and profitable. Cognite provides a user-friendly, secure, and scalable platform that makes it easy for all decision-makers, from the field to remote operations centers, to access and understand complex industrial data, collaborate in real-time, and build a better tomorrow. Visit us at www.cognite.com and follow us on LinkedIn and X.
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Michelle Holford
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michelle.holford@Cognite.com
*For more information on ARC's related research, visit the Operational Data Historian/Industrial Data Platform report.