True North Prognostics

Founded in 2025 in San Diego, True North Prognostics (TNP) is a technology think tank dedicated to using artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced analytics to prevent catastrophic failures in critical industries. The company focuses on creating digital solutions that increase safety margins, more efficient, and more sustainable across defense, transportation, energy, and manufacturing sectors.

TNP’s goal is to harness the digital and AI revolution to build technologies that protect human life and the environment. The company is committed to innovation, collaboration, and social responsibility, developing tools that anticipate problems before they occur and help industries operate more safely and efficiently.

At the heart of TNP’s work is the AI-MSET (Artificial Intelligence Multivariate State Estimation Technique) — an advanced machine learning algorithm designed to detect early signs of mechanisms that can lead to system failures. AI-MSET learns how systems behave under normal conditions and continuously monitors sensor data to identify subtle changes that might signal the onset of developing anomalies in all types of engineering assets, or the onset of malicious intrusion activity for enhancement of prognostic cybersecurity in SCADA and other business-critical IT assets and networks.

Unlike traditional monitoring systems that rely on static thresholds, AI-MSET dynamically adapts to the characteristics of each sensor in any small or large collection of dynamically interacting sensors in real time. This allows AI-MSET to achieve very high prognostic sensitivity while keeping false alarms extremely low, even in noisy environments.

AI-MSET was approved by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for monitoring all commercial nuclear plants in the US. It is also IEEE-published, peer-reviewed, and proven to outperform all other machine learning methods — such as neural networks and/or their derivative forms — in terms of accuracy, lead time for early warnings of the onset of anomalies, lowest false-alarm and missed-alarm probabilities, and  2-3  orders of magnitude lower compute cost (compared to neural networks monitoring the same numbers of signals). For multivariate time-series prognostics, competitive neural networks to a few hundred signals, even on the most powerful GPUs. 

AI-MSET scales to massive datasets, processing hundreds of thousands to millions of signals in real time.  On smaller data sets comprised of several thousand signals can be process on much lower-power CPUs and compact hardware like laptops, 1RU enterprise boxes, and Raspberry Pi’s.

TNP’s technologies are applied across many fields, including:

• Defense and Aerospace: Early detection of incipient faults in Defense assets, including land, air (fixed-wing and rotary-wing assets), sea (surface and underwater), and space; as well as commercial aircraft (including landing gear prognostics) and space systems.
• Transportation: Preventing train derailments, malicious intrusions in safety-critical switch & crossing (S&C) systems, and monitoring bridge, tie, and substrate integrity in real time.
• Situational Awareness: involving human-in-the-loop (HITL) supervisory control of complex engineering assets.
• High Frequency Waveforms: processing high-frequency waveforms on low-cost compute platforms and with substantially reduced I/O-bandwidth for sensors, including Vibrations (KHz), Acoustics (MHz), IR Thermal Imagery (GHz).
• Carbon Sequestration: Identification of sources and leaks.
• IT Systems: Electronic prognostics, optimized power management, software aging and rejuvenation, and prognostic cyber security.
• OT Systems: monitoring industrial environments to detect the early onset of malicious intrusion activity (and with ultra-low false-alarm rates).
• Manufacturing: Predictive and prescriptive maintenance that reduces downtime, scrap rates, Operation & Maintenance (O&M) costs, while enhancing quality for manufactured products, thereby reducing both warranty costs and sparing logistics.
• Energy: Monitoring all instrumentation and sensors for commercial nuclear power plants, improving wind turbine efficiency and RAS (reliability, availability, and serviceability), desalination efficiency, and lithium extraction.
• Healthcare and Safety: Detecting counterfeit pharmaceuticals and eliminating risks from thermal runaway in all classes of Lithium-Ion batteries.

In short, True North Prognostics is driving the future of predictive technology — merging AI, data science, and engineering to create smarter, safer, and more sustainable systems for industries that power our world.