Bentley Builds on Cesium with New Philadelphia Technology Hub

Bentley Builds on Cesium with New Philadelphia Technology Hub

Bentley Systems has opened a new technology hub in Philadelphia’s Center City, bringing its infrastructure engineering software operation closer to the Cesium developer community it acquired in 2024. Located at the Curtis Center, the office will also provide an experience centre where infrastructure professionals, students and partners can explore technologies used across project delivery and asset performance.

The geography is significant for both businesses. Bentley began in the Philadelphia region before developing into a global infrastructure software company headquartered in nearby Exton, while Cesium emerged from the city’s technology community. Bentley’s September 2024 acquisition brought Cesium’s open 3D geospatial technology alongside its iTwin digital twin platform, and the intervening two years have seen those capabilities begin to appear across Bentley’s software.

The technical direction reaches beyond the integration of two product portfolios. Infrastructure models increasingly sit within much larger digital representations of the physical world, combining precise engineering information with terrain, buildings, imagery, point clouds and reality data. Cesium provides much of the technology required to manage and stream that wider geospatial environment.

Briefing

• Bentley Systems has opened a new technology hub and infrastructure experience centre at the Curtis Center in Philadelphia.
• The office brings Bentley and Cesium teams together following Bentley’s acquisition of the Philadelphia-based 3D geospatial company in September 2024.
• Cesium developed 3D Tiles, the open format designed for streaming very large heterogeneous 3D geospatial datasets.
• Cesium technology has subsequently appeared across Bentley products and platforms as the company combines engineering models with wider geospatial environments.
• The Philadelphia operation will also provide a base for developers, students, infrastructure professionals and Bentley’s open-source community.

Engineering Models and the Physical World

The distinction between engineering information and geospatial information has always been partly artificial. Roads cross landscapes, railway alignments pass through cities and terrain, utilities sit beneath streets, and bridges exist within river systems and transport networks. The software used to design those assets, however, has traditionally worked with different data structures and priorities from the systems used to represent the surrounding world.

Digital twins expose that separation particularly clearly. A detailed engineering model might contain structural geometry, asset information and design data at extremely high precision, while its surrounding environment can involve aerial photography, terrain, buildings, point clouds and photogrammetry covering kilometres rather than metres. Bringing those datasets together requires more than putting two models on the same screen.

That problem sits close to the origins of Cesium and its 3D Tiles specification, developed for streaming massive heterogeneous 3D geospatial datasets. The Open Geospatial Consortium describes the standard as a hierarchical structure capable of handling information including photogrammetry, buildings, BIM and CAD models, point clouds and instanced features. Different levels of detail allow an application to retrieve the information appropriate to the user’s position and requirements rather than loading an entire environment at full resolution.

3D Tiles was adopted as an OGC Community Standard in 2019 and has since developed into an established mechanism for delivering large 3D geospatial datasets. Its open status also fits an infrastructure market in which owners can accumulate information across decades, multiple contractors and successive generations of software.

From Acquisition to Product Integration

Bentley acquired Cesium in September 2024, describing the combination at the time as a way of connecting Cesium’s 3D geospatial capabilities with the iTwin Platform. Cesium was already considerably more than a visualisation technology. Bentley reported that the Cesium ion software-as-a-service platform was delivering 3D geospatial experiences to more than one million active devices each month, while Cesium’s open-source technologies had recorded more than 10 million downloads.

That developer footprint gave Bentley something different from another conventional engineering software product. Infrastructure software has historically been dominated by specialist applications serving relatively defined professional communities, whereas Cesium’s open geospatial technologies are used by developers building applications across a much wider range of environments.

Since the acquisition, the relationship has begun moving into Bentley’s product architecture. MicroStation 2025 introduced support for 3D Tiles, allowing engineering teams to work with large geospatial environments including Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles and other reality data. Cesium capabilities have also been incorporated into Bentley Infrastructure Cloud Connect, while iTwin Engage combines engineering information from iTwin with Cesium 3D Tiles and real-time visualisation technology from Unreal Engine.

The progression provides useful context for the Philadelphia opening. Bentley is no longer describing how Cesium might eventually complement its engineering platforms. Elements of that integration are already reaching users, while the new hub gives the developer operation a physical centre.

Patrick Cozzi, Chief Platform Officer at Bentley Systems and a central figure in Cesium’s development, described the office in terms of both its origins and its future role: “The Philadelphia region is where Cesium started as an ambitious idea to bring 3D graphics to the web. Opening this office in Center City feels like a homecoming, but with global scale. This space will be a lighthouse for the open-source community, a collaborative engine for developers, and a testament to what happens when you combine the best of infrastructure engineering with the power of real-world 3D data.”

Adding Geospatial Context

Bentley’s direction became clearer shortly after the Cesium acquisition when the company announced a strategic partnership with Google in October 2024. The agreement was intended to make Google Maps Platform geospatial content, including Photorealistic 3D Tiles, available within Bentley workflows.

For infrastructure design, the practical attraction is straightforward. A road, bridge or railway model can be examined against terrain, surrounding development and other spatial constraints without recreating every element of that environment as engineering geometry. During operations, surveys, inspection information, sensor data and asset records can also be associated with their physical location rather than treated as disconnected datasets.

The scale of the information involved remains demanding. Point clouds, photogrammetry, BIM information, terrain and repeated reality-capture surveys can quickly produce datasets far larger than conventional engineering models. Hierarchical streaming allows applications to work with suitable levels of detail while preserving access to richer information when it is required.

Open formats add another consideration. Major infrastructure assets routinely remain in service for longer than the software originally used to design them. Contractors, consultants and technology platforms can change repeatedly over an asset’s life, increasing the value of information that can move between systems without depending entirely on a proprietary application.

Philadelphia’s Technology Base

Bentley’s choice of Philadelphia also retains the regional connections of both businesses. The company traces its history in the area to an early operation at the University City Science Center before establishing its headquarters in Exton. Cesium developed in Center City, while Bentley has relationships with academic institutions including the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University.

Putting the combined developer operation in Center City keeps Cesium’s existing community anchored in Philadelphia while giving Bentley access to the region’s engineering, academic and technology base. The hub is intended to serve developers as well as providing an experience centre for infrastructure professionals, students and partners.

Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker described the expansion as an investment in that wider ecosystem: “Bentley’s downtown expansion is a strong vote of confidence in Philadelphia’s talent and technology ecosystem. This investment will expand economic opportunity, strengthen ties with our universities and developer community, and reinforce Philadelphia’s role as a global center for innovation.”

The Curtis Center adds an appropriate historical detail. Once the headquarters of Curtis Publishing, one of the influential American publishing businesses of the early twentieth century, the building was created around an earlier generation of information production and distribution. It now houses a developer operation concerned with moving very different quantities of information through digital infrastructure.

An Open 3D Infrastructure Environment

Acquisitions in software are easier to announce than to integrate. Bentley bought Cesium because the two companies occupied adjacent but distinct parts of the digital infrastructure landscape. Cesium brought web-native 3D geospatial technology, an open standard and a substantial developer community; Bentley brought engineering applications, infrastructure-domain expertise and the iTwin environment used to organise engineering information across the lifecycle of physical assets.

The long-term test is how successfully those capabilities work together without weakening the openness that helped Cesium achieve widespread adoption. Bentley CEO Nicholas Cumins placed the Philadelphia opening directly within that integration effort: “Bentley’s acquisition of Cesium was based on a shared vision of an open, interconnected 3D world. Today, opening our new Philadelphia office is the physical manifestation of that vision. By bringing our teams together in this vibrant tech hub, we are accelerating the integration of engineering and geospatial data to help our users design, build, and operate safer and more resilient infrastructure.”

The result is unlikely to be a universal digital twin containing every available piece of information. Different applications require different levels of precision, currency and engineering detail. A structural engineer analysing a bridge connection has very different requirements from a transport planner examining an urban corridor, even when both are working with representations of the same physical environment.

Bentley’s approach increasingly provides ways for those different representations to coexist. Detailed engineering models can retain their precision while geospatial technology supplies the larger physical context, with information streamed according to what an application actually needs.

The Philadelphia hub arrives after two years in which Cesium has begun moving from acquisition into Bentley’s product architecture. The office gives that work a physical centre, while the software provides the more substantial evidence of where the strategy is heading: infrastructure engineering models are increasingly being designed, examined and operated within a much larger digital representation of the world around them.

Key Industry Questions

1. What is Bentley Systems’ new Philadelphia technology hub? It is a Center City office at the Curtis Center designed to house technology and developer activity while providing an experience centre for infrastructure professionals, students and partners. It also brings Bentley and Cesium teams together following the 2024 acquisition.
2. Why did Bentley acquire Cesium? Cesium provides open technology for large-scale 3D geospatial applications, complementing Bentley’s engineering and digital twin platforms. The combination allows detailed infrastructure information to be placed within broader real-world geographic environments.
3. What are 3D Tiles? 3D Tiles is an open standard for streaming large heterogeneous 3D geospatial datasets. It can handle information including photogrammetry, buildings, BIM and CAD data and point clouds while using hierarchical levels of detail to manage large environments efficiently.
4. Is 3D Tiles a proprietary Bentley format? No. 3D Tiles is an Open Geospatial Consortium Community Standard. Cesium originally developed the specification and continues to support an open ecosystem around it.
5. How is Cesium being integrated into Bentley software? 3D Tiles support has appeared in MicroStation, while Cesium capabilities are also being used across Bentley’s infrastructure cloud and digital twin technologies. The integrations allow engineering information to be combined with larger geospatial environments.
6. Where does Google fit into Bentley’s geospatial strategy? Bentley and Google announced a strategic partnership in October 2024 that enables Google Maps Platform geospatial content, including Photorealistic 3D Tiles, to be used within Bentley software and digital twin workflows.
7. Why is interoperability important for infrastructure digital twins? Infrastructure can remain operational for decades while software platforms, contractors and data formats change repeatedly. Open and interoperable approaches make it easier for information to remain usable across different systems and stages of an asset’s lifecycle.
8. Will geospatial environments replace detailed engineering models? No. They serve different purposes. Large-scale geospatial environments provide physical and geographic context, while engineering models contain the precision and domain-specific information required for design, analysis, construction and asset management.

Strategic Takeaways

1. Bentley’s Cesium acquisition is now producing visible integrations across its engineering and digital twin software rather than remaining a standalone geospatial acquisition.
2. 3D Tiles gives the combined platform an established open mechanism for handling large and varied geospatial datasets.
3. Cesium’s developer community potentially extends Bentley’s reach beyond conventional engineering software users into a broader application-development ecosystem.
4. Combining engineering models, reality capture and streamed geospatial information increases the importance of interoperability and disciplined management of different levels of detail.
5. The Philadelphia hub gives the integration a physical base while retaining Cesium’s connection with the developer community from which it emerged.