Axpo boosts operational efficiency across the energy value chain

Overview

Axpo Group, a major player in the Swiss energy sector, built a GenAI knowledge platform on the Databricks Data + AI Platform to give employees secure, permission-aware search across internal data sources including technical standards, specifications and best practices. The architecture uses a medallion pattern (Bronze/Silver/Gold layers), Lakeflow Jobs for orchestration, RAG-based AI Search, GPT-4o for conversational responses, and Mistral OCR for scanned documents. The tool achieved a 90% approval rating and delivered 30% time savings for power users, with a 3x increase in user adoption as it expanded beyond engineering.

The challenge

Axpo's engineers and other employees needed a faster way to access critical internal knowledge such as technical standards, specifications and best practices, but legacy challenges — data silos, fragmented tools and manual processes — slowed progress. Critical knowledge was scattered across siloed systems, forcing employees to rely on point-of-contact subject matter experts, and disconnected tools and workflows hindered collaboration between data engineering and ML teams. Growing concerns around data residency and governance underscored the need for a centralized, compliant platform.

The solution

Axpo's Generative AI Competence Center built a GenAI knowledge assistant on the Databricks Data + AI Platform, following a medallion architecture (Bronze/Silver/Gold layers) with raw data from sources like Confluence wikis. Lakeflow Jobs orchestrate daily pipelines to index and enrich content. A RAG-based AI Search index over the Gold layer enables secure, permission-aware retrieval enforced with row-level access controls, OpenAI's GPT-4o generates conversational responses, and Mistral's OCR model extracts searchable content from scanned PDFs and attachments. The agent is deployed via Databricks Model Serving as an endpoint integrated into internal dashboards, chat tools and the Axpo Insights product. Machine learning is also used to automatically classify vendor and spending data for procurement visibility.

Reported business value

Internal users report over 90% satisfaction (approval rating) with the knowledge assistant. Project managers and other power users estimate they've reclaimed up to 30% of their time. Adoption has grown 3x as the tool expanded beyond its original engineering audience company-wide.