Asset-intensive industries have experience with analytics and AI systems. These are systems that report. Now they are maturing beyond models that chat to systems that do. The past decade’s “Inference Economy” rewarded prediction. AI systems that delivered insights, summaries, and forecasts. But insights alone don’t control robotic welders, balance drill-head pressure, or optimize blast furnace airflow. The next leap in value creation is creating an “Orchestration Economy”. In this new world, coordinated teams of AI agents monitor, decide, and act across entire production processes and ecosystems.
To paraphrase one industry observer, “Don’t buy AI; buy outcomes.” Industrial AI’s future value now lies not in generating answers and insights, but in achieving outcomes that create Industrial Impact®: optimized yields, zero downtime, self-correcting production flows, etc.
In asset-intensive industries like manufacturing, energy, and mining, the differences between these economies are tangible. The Inference Economy produced dashboards, alarms, and analytics. The Orchestration Economy builds digital workforces, each agent a specialist coordinating in real time across assets, production, suppliers, and customers.
In advanced manufacturing, multi-agent control systems now synchronize machine vision, energy optimization, and supply chain flows in hybrid “intelligent factories.” When a robotic sensor detects a deviation, agents automatically adjust upstream mixes or downstream schedules, preserving quality without human intervention.
In oil and gas, agents manage drilling operations: one agent tracks downhole pressure, another monitors torque patterns, and a third enforces safety thresholds before corrective actions are executed.
In mining, autonomous extraction agents coordinate fleets of haul trucks and loaders, balancing loads and routes based on live geospatial and equipment data.
The Orchestration Economy redefines how industrial organizations create, measure, and scale value:
Industrial leaders adopting agentic AI already report measurable outcomes; they will go further with orchestrated teams of agents:
This transition redefines value for heavy industry.
Smart alone isn’t enough. The Orchestration Economy rewards those who can coordinate the tasks of multiple agents. Industrial companies that harness orchestrated AI teams that plan, learn, and execute together will own the next decade of operational excellence, agility, and profitability.
As agent orchestration matures, AMESA (a Momenta portfolio company) stands out as a model of what autonomous orchestration looks like in practice. Built for the realities of industrial AI, AMESA’s platform combines simulation, feedback, and orchestration into a single environment where agents learn by doing in collaboration with human experts. AMESA’s Agent Cloud, Orchestration Studio, and Assist Agents let enterprises design digital workforces, train them safely, and deploy proven agent teams into live operations. By turning agent learning into measurable performance and linking every improvement to yield, efficiency, and downtime, AMESA exemplifies the transition from AI that talks to AI that does, and from the Inference Economy to the Orchestration Economy.
The age of AI that talks is over. The age of AI that does has begun.
Momenta is the leading Industrial Impact® venture capital firm, accelerating innovation in energy, manufacturing, smart spaces, and supply chains. For over a decade, our team of industry operators has helped scale breakthrough founders who transform critical sectors, drive sustainability, and improve quality of life. PitchBook named Momenta one of the world’s top ten digital industry venture funds in both 2023 and 2024, one of only two European-headquartered VCs to earn this distinction. Momenta stands at the forefront of global industrial innovation. Discover more at momenta.vc.