Drone Boat Maker Saronic Raises $1.75B as Iran War Shows the Power of Autonomous Warfare

Drone boat maker Saronic Technologies has raised $1.75 billion to ramp up production buoyed by the effectiveness of autonomous equipment and weaponry in the Iran war.

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Doubled Valuation

The company said its Series D funding round had more than doubled its valuation to $9.25 billion from the $4 billion it landed following a $600 million raise last year.

Saronic makes autonomous surface vessels – essentially drone boats – including a six-foot-long vessel known as Spyglass and its 40-metric-ton marauder. It said that the new funds would be spent on ramping up its supply chain and shipyards and building more than 20 ships a year by 2027, including a new shipyard in Texas called Port Alpha.

The Iran and Ukraine wars have revealed how pivotal drones, mostly in the air, have been in helping weaker nations defend themselves against rivals with more formidable traditional military power like planes or battleships. Earlier this month, Shield AI, whose Hivemind software allows drones and aircraft to operate in GPS-denied environments, raised $1.5 billion in new funding.

New and Cheaper Wars

Autonomous military equipment is also crucial to governments, including the U.S., trying to find new and cheaper modern warfare tools, which can also be built more quickly than traditional equipment.

Indeed, last year Saronic sealed a $392M production contract with the U.S. Navy for its Corsair autonomous maritime vessels.

“Over the past decades, the U.S. has experienced a steady erosion of its ability to build ships and manufacture critical maritime infrastructure,” said Dino Mavrookas, Co-Founder and CEO of Saronic. “We are confronting this challenge with a fundamentally new model of American shipbuilding, one that integrates first-principles engineering, advanced manufacturing, and software-defined production to deliver autonomous vessels with unprecedented speed, precision, and scale.”

The ​round was led by Kleiner Perkins and brings in a raft of new backers including Advent International, Bessemer Venture Partners, DFJ Growth, and ​BAM Elevate, alongside existing ‌investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, 8VC, Caffeinated Capital, Elad Gil, and ​Franklin Templeton BEN +0.70% ▲ .

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