maritime-intelligence
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Neil Sobin
Neil Sobin is the founder and CEO of Quartermaster, an Arlington, Virginia company turning working ships into sensing nodes for a global maritime intelligence network. Its SmartMast hardware bolts weather-hardened cameras and radios onto vessel masts, runs AI at the edge, and stitches the feeds into a live picture of the open ocean. After building distributed networks at Hivemapper and AI infrastructure at Scale AI, Sobin raised a $43M Series A in May 2026 co-led by First Round Capital and Quiet Capital, with more than 600 vessels already covering 10 million square miles and assisting 20-plus rescues.
John Keh
John Keh is the Founder and CEO of Valtec, a San Diego-based maritime AI and drone company that deploys autonomous VTOL systems on commercial fishing vessels to detect tuna schools in real time. A UC Berkeley alumnus and former US Air Force geospatial intelligence analyst with 250+ missions across South Korea and the Middle East, Keh pivoted from food delivery (3rd employee at Caviar, Uber Eats courier intelligence lead) to maritime defense after four years building startups in Taiwan. Valtec raised a $2M pre-seed round in March 2025 backed by SparkLabs Taiwan, Wavemaker VC, DRONE FUND, Guitar Hero founder Kai Huang, and Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, with the company's Larus VTOL drone and Fulcan AI platform now deployed on 40+ fishing vessels across Taiwan and the Philippines.