One the first day of its 2025 Year in Infrastructure conference in Amsterdam, Bentley Systems made a series of announcements that demonstrated its commitment to advancing the use of AI across its product portfolio. The company introduced new infrastructure AI capabilities, announced the creation of an Infrastructure AI co-innovation initiative, unveiled its Bentley Infrastructure Cloud Connect system, and launched its iTwin Engage system, and more.
Speaking at a press briefing following these announcements, Bentley Systems CEO Nicholas Cumins explained that his company’s announcements reflect a rapidly growing commitment to AI technology among infrastructure professionals. “Our users are not waiting,” Cumins said. “You have the more sophisticated, larger engineering services firms who are going all in on AI, and then you have the others who are looking at that and saying, ‘That's going to be a bit of a multiplier.’”
Bentley’s new products and services, Cumins asserted, are designed to help these companies improve the accuracy and efficiency of their individual projects, while enhancing the ways engineers and others use AI technology overall.
“We see our role as both helping the most advanced engineering firms in their own AI endeavors, but it is also on us to democratize the use of AI so that AI is available to all engineering firms and all owner operators, not just the most sophisticated ones,” said Cumins.
Moreover, the company released a statement explaining that it has created “an auditing system that provides visibility into how data was used to train Bentley AI models,” called the Data Agreement Registry. Also, Bentley has established the Infrastructure AI Co-Innovation Initiative to “will examine how Bentley APIs can evolve to better support AI use cases and explore new commercial models that reflect the evolving balance between AI-driven and human-driven work.”
Here’s a brief look at some of Bentley Systems’ newly announced products and services:
Enhanced OpenSite+
Bentley has added new AI-enabled applications to its OpenSite+ system for civil site design. Using a “context-aware AI assistant that guides users through workflows, surfaces relevant documents, and can make changes to models,” these applications, the company said, address “substation design and construction management that accelerate the adoption of AI across project delivery.”
New Search Capabilities for ProjectWise
Bentley has added AI-powered search capabilities in ProjectWise, part of Bentley Infrastructure Cloud. Aimed at reducing “the time users spend searching for information,” these search functions “a streamlined, intuitive interface, and contextualized AI search capabilities,” enabling users to “receive instant, concise summaries generated by AI, without needing to open files or switch between applications.”
A Connected Data Environment
During the conference, Bentley also announced the introduction of Bentley Infrastructure Cloud Connect. Described as “the new foundational layer of Bentley Infrastructure Cloud,” the system “provides a connected data environment and unified experience for infrastructure professionals interacting with project and asset data, improving collaboration across the infrastructure lifecycle and value chain.” Cloud Connect “leverages Bentley’s iTwin platform to ingest data from over 50 distinct file formats and integrate with a variety of enterprise systems
iTwin Engage
To enable “infrastructure teams and their stakeholders to engage immersively with digital twins of future and existing infrastructure assets,” Bentley has introduced iTwin Engage. Used in concert with Cesium and game engine technology, iTwin Engage enables the building of “impactful, narrative-driven content that brings projects and assets to life.”
Enhancements for Cesium
Bentley also announced that it has “added reality modeling services from iTwin Capture to Cesium ion” in order to create “a complete, automated pipeline from data capture through geospatial visualization.” With these new capabilities, Bentley said that Cesium ion can create detailed 3D visualizations—reality meshes, point clouds, and Gaussian splats—directly from imagery, annotated by AI, ready to stream within applications using open standards.”
Bentley Open Applications and Bentley Infrastructure Cloud
Bentley reported that its CAD software for infrastructure design, MicroStation 2025, now offers support for 3D Tiles via Cesium. In addition, the company said that “Cesium is also powering the geospatial experience in Bentley Infrastructure Cloud Connect.”
