# Charles Chiau

> Charles Chiau is a Taiwanese American robotics engineer, co-founder, and chief technology officer of Bedrock Ocean Exploration. Across two decades he has worked on crewed submersibles, autonomous cars and aircraft, SpaceX's Crew Dragon avionics, and autonomous underwater vehicles. At Bedrock, he helped turn a plan to integrate off-the-shelf survey equipment into a vertically integrated fleet of ocean robots and cloud software, then served roughly two and a half years as both CEO and CTO before returning to a technology-focused CTO role in 2026.

- **Role:** Chief Technology Officer and Co-founder at Bedrock Ocean Exploration
- **Organizations:** Bedrock Ocean Exploration, SpaceX, Reliable Robotics, DeepFlight, SRI International, UC Berkeley
- **Nationality:** Taiwanese American
- **Education:** B.S., Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley
- **Known for:** Co-founded Bedrock Ocean Exploration and helped build its vertically integrated autonomous underwater vehicle, autonomy software, mission-planning, and ocean-data platform., Helped design avionics systems for SpaceX's Crew Dragon program., Engineered and piloted crewed submersibles at DeepFlight.

## Career timeline

- **2003-2004** — Contributed as an undergraduate assistant to research and operations at the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory.
- **2005** — Completed a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at UC Berkeley.
- **2006** — Worked with UC Berkeley and the Office of Naval Research on an island-defense concept that included three low-cost unmanned underwater vehicles.
- **2000s-2010s** — Engineered and piloted crewed submersibles at DeepFlight, including vehicles associated with Tom Perkins, Richard Branson, and Steve Fossett; also worked on robotics at SRI International.
- **2010** — Was named as co-inventor with Graham Hawkes on a published remotely operated underwater vehicle patent application.
- **2010s** — Worked at SpaceX on avionics systems for Crew Dragon.
- **2010s** — Worked as a systems integration engineer on autonomous aviation at Reliable Robotics.
- **2020** — Co-founded Bedrock Ocean Exploration with Anthony DiMare.
- **2021** — Bedrock announced an $8 million seed round; the company also began trials of its rebuilt, in-house AUV architecture.
- **2022** — Bedrock ran its first fully autonomous mission using its own hardware and software architecture at Lake Tahoe.
- **2023** — Bedrock deployed its prototype in the ocean at Monterey Bay and later completed a multi-AUV corridor survey.
- **2024** — Chiau added the CEO role while retaining CTO responsibilities after co-founder Anthony DiMare moved to chairman.
- **2025** — Bedrock closed a $25 million Series A-2 round led by Primary and Northzone and expanded commercial deployments.
- **2026** — After about two and a half years in the dual role, Chiau returned to focusing solely on CTO duties as Matthew Tirman became CEO.

## Achievements

- Co-founded Bedrock Ocean Exploration and helped build its vertically integrated autonomous underwater vehicle, autonomy software, mission-planning, and ocean-data platform.
- Helped design avionics systems for SpaceX's Crew Dragon program.
- Engineered and piloted crewed submersibles at DeepFlight.
- Led Bedrock's technical progression from off-the-shelf integration to an in-house AUV architecture and multi-vehicle ocean surveys.
- Co-authored Bedrock's published account of a 2023 multi-AUV field test that achieved 0.02-meter agreement in overlapping bathymetric data.
- Named as a co-inventor on underwater vehicle and fiber-optic tether patent filings.
- Helped move Bedrock from research and development into revenue-generating commercial operations and international deployments while serving as CEO and CTO.

## Latest updates

- **2026-09** — Bedrock and First Marine Solutions established a UK and European hub in Aberdeen and trained an initial cohort of partner operators on Bedrock systems.
- **2026-08** — Bedrock, Integer Technologies, and Liquid Robotics demonstrated a connected autonomous undersea architecture for the U.S. Navy during LANTERNFISH 26.
- **2026-04** — Matthew Tirman became Bedrock's CEO; Chiau continued as founder and CTO, focusing on the company's dual-use hardware and software roadmap.
- **2025-12** — Chiau appeared on the Seabed 2030 podcast with Bedrock's Bridgit Boulahanis to discuss vertically integrated ocean exploration.
- **2025-06** — Bedrock announced a $25 million Series A-2 funding round led by Primary and Northzone.

## Links

- Website: https://www.bedrockocean.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charleschiau
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfTNKEvDDZo

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/charles-chiau
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-09-27