Rylan Hamilton

Rylan Hamilton is the CEO and co-founder of Blue Water Autonomy, a Boston defense-tech company building large, software-defined, uncrewed ships for the U.S. Navy. A Navy surface warfare officer turned robotics entrepreneur, he was an early leader at Kiva Systems (acquired by Amazon for $775M) and co-founded the warehouse-robot maker 6 River Systems (sold to Shopify for $450M). Now he is taking the 'mobile robot' idea back to the ocean - aiming to be the Waymo of the open sea, with a $50M GV-led Series A and a first full-scale autonomous ship slated for the water in 2026.