Blue Water Autonomy – a technology company building autonomous ships for the U.S. Navy – announced it emerged from stealth and raised $14 million in seed funding from Eclipse, Riot, and Impatient Ventures.
The company is building an unmanned and highly producible ship that can serve many missions on the open ocean. Launched in 2024 by leaders formerly of Amazon Robotics, iRobot, and the U.S. Navy, Blue Water Autonomy has developed a full-stack autonomy suite, commenced saltwater testing, and developed concept ship designs in under a year. With this seed funding, the company will expand its engineering team, accelerate ship testing, and integrate different payloads onto its platform.
Geopolitical tensions with Russia and China drive military buildups globally, so the U.S. Navy must maintain deterrence in the Pacific while keeping global trade lanes open. In the Red Sea, U.S. warships have been seeing months of combat. And new threats, from the Black Sea to the Baltic, prove their danger every day.
In the Pacific, Chinese shipyards are also launching ships at a pace that U.S. industry cannot match. And by deploying autonomous ships at scale and at lower cost, the Navy can complement its current fleet and restore deterrence.
Blue Water Autonomy’s team features proven founders and Navy veterans, bringing the deep understanding, urgency, and experience necessary to help the U.S. Navy meet the moment it faces by delivering America’s warfighters overdue innovation. And with a track record of delivering hundreds of products and deploying millions of robots to commercial customers, Blue Water Autonomy knows what it takes to innovate, iterate, and scale.
The Navy will soon run autonomous warships alongside crewed destroyers, submarines, and aircraft carriers – providing new and timely capability to the fleet. And eventually, the core unmanned technology developed for the Navy will pave the way for similarly revolutionary innovation in commercial markets from cargo and offshore energy, to fishing and luxury transportation.
KEY QUOTES:
“Sea power has been the bedrock of America’s security and prosperity for centuries. We believe the entire maritime economy is in need of transformation — it starts with supporting the U.S. Navy which needs dynamic industrial partners to bring top technology to its sailors, including ocean-going, fully autonomous ships.”
- Rylan Hamilton, co-founder and CEO of Blue Water Autonomy
“The U.S. military needs more than incremental improvements to meet the moment and maintain its status on the global stage. Autonomous ships are critical to enable the Navy to continue securing deterrence given the threat of China and Russia and the importance of shipping lanes in the Pacific. We previously backed Rylan at 6 River Systems and have seen first-hand his ability to scale a full stack technology company from concept to exit. No other company is tackling this problem at the ship level like Blue Water. The team is a rare combination of roboticists and Navy veterans that positions them to be a critical partner to the Navy, the entire Department of Defense, and will have a major impact on the maritime industry.”
- Seth Winterroth, partner at Eclipse
