autonomous-ships
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Dino Mavrookas and the Case for a Thousand Boats
He left the SEAL teams for private equity, then left private equity to build boats. At Saronic, Dino Mavrookas is testing a blunt idea: an autonomous fleet matters only if a country can actually make it.
Blue Water Autonomy Inc.
Blue Water Autonomy is a Boston-based defense-tech and shipbuilding company designing and mass-producing fully unmanned, long-range autonomous ships for the U.S. Navy. Founded in 2024 by veterans of the Navy, Amazon Robotics, and iRobot, the company pairs a full-stack autonomy suite with producible ship designs aimed at sailing thousands of miles for months at a time. It emerged from stealth in April 2025 and has raised $64M total, including a $50M Series A led by GV.
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.