We’re building autonomous ships for the U.S. Navy and commercial customers. Our team has launched 100+ hardware products, built some of America’s most complex ships, and fielded millions of robots. Some of these are in use in your home, others on Ukraine’s battlefields. We don’t doubt that building ships with no human crew will be tough. We like tough.
External link for Blue Water Autonomy
Boston, MA, US
What's a Software-Defined Ship? Read on to find out
Highly recommended reading from Artem Sherbinin and Austin Gray in War on the Rocks about software defined warships. As USS PINCKNEY (DDG 91) pilots new technology for the fleet, the importance of good software is a weekly topic. Great work. https://lnkd.in/gUsfjPkF
Blue Water Autonomy reposted this
**BREAKING NEWS - Blue Water Autonomy announces their $50M Series A on The Defense Tech Underground Podcast** 🚢 Check out Episode 15 with Blue Water Autonomy -- anywhere you listen to podcasts! We sit down with Rylan Hamilton and Austin Gray, co-founders of Blue Water Autonomy, to explore how they’re building the next generation of autonomous ships for the U.S. Navy, and beyond! They share how careers that began on Navy decks and in intelligence led to robotics, entrepreneurship, and ultimately founding Blue Water Autonomy. We dive into: ⚓ Why autonomous ships could transform naval logistics and combat readiness ⚓ How a “crawl, walk, run” approach beats the Navy’s traditional acquisition cycle ⚓ The future of dual-use autonomy in commercial shipping and global trade ⚓ Hard-won advice for defense tech founders on obsession, grit, and timing 🎧 Listen to Episode 15 wherever you get your podcasts. 🔗 Learn more about our mission at www.defensetechpod.org
Blue Water Autonomy reposted this
It's an honor to be part of the journey with Rylan Hamilton and the team at Blue Water Autonomy as they build out a key next-generation naval capability. We at GV (Google Ventures) are thrilled to lead their Series A and I’m privileged to join their board of directors. Blue Water Autonomy is redefining naval shipping through their platform for autonomous ships built for speedier production, seamless upgrades and lower operating costs than traditional crewed warships. Their approach fuses modern autonomy with decades of operational experience from US Navy and robotics veterans. Many have already felt the transformative power of autonomous transportation – whether summoning a Waymo, engaging Tesla autopilot, or receiving a Zipline delivery – yet its potential to reshape our world is just beginning to emerge. With geopolitical tensions and global logistical complexities intensifying, open-ocean autonomy offers great opportunity, addressing the U.S. Navy’s urgent need for a more distributed, agile fleet. Just as SpaceX frees NASA to prioritize payloads over transport, Blue Water empowers the U.S. Navy to efficiently focus its resources where they matter most over the coming decades. Leading the charge is Rylan, a fellow U.S. military veteran I’ve had the pleasure of working alongside for nearly two decades. From our time together in graduate school and then Kiva Systems, to his successes running 6 River Systems, he has always displayed the qualities of a customer-obsessed, service-oriented leader — clear vision, deep curiosity, and relentless execution. He has now assembled a world-class team to take on a mission that is as urgent as it is consequential. The deep respect I have for him as a founder is what makes this partnership so special. I’m excited to join their board and support Rylan and the team to chart the future of naval autonomy! Read more about the deal: https://lnkd.in/gBwhCGyd
Blue Water Autonomy reposted this
Blue Water Autonomy is charting the course for the future of naval technology by designing autonomous ships for the U.S. Navy. Led by CEO and co-founder Rylan Hamilton, a U.S. Navy veteran and exceptional repeat founder, the Blue Water team brings deep experience from shipbuilding, robotics, and defense. We’re proud to jump aboard, and have GV Managing Partner Dave Munichiello join their board, to lead their Series A. Their biggest milestone is yet to come, as they plan to deliver their first full-scale ship next year. What sets these ships apart is the full-stack approach BWA takes. They’ve designed the entire platform from the ground up for autonomous operations. The result is their ships are faster to produce, easier to upgrade, and designed to operate solo at sea for months at a time. We’re excited to support this team as they take on the open ocean and strengthen U.S. maritime power. Welcome to GV, Blue Water Autonomy! 🚢
We are proud to announce our Series A. GV (Google Ventures) - with all Blue Water insiders joining - has led a $50M round that allows us to deliver for our customers and our country. 🇺🇸 We are not slowing down. We have used the last year to hire the best robotics engineers in Boston, build a team of veteran shipbuilders, and open a third office in Washington D.C. We are testing on the salt water on ship-scale hardware. We are building capability to attack America's shipbuilding crisis at its core. This round allows us to build our first full ship and keep pace with a Navy customer that demands speed. We will double down on our fully autonomous design, deepen relationships with our 50+ suppliers, and deliver mass-producible ships to the U.S. Navy and future customers. Thanks to our incredible employees, their families, and to our investors. All of us know this is only an early chapter in the story of America's maritime industrial renaissance. Much work lies ahead. 🛠️ Damn the torpedoes. CC Dave Munichiello Eclipse Riot Ventures Impatient Ventures Seth Winterroth Stephen Marcus Jack Dreifuss Lior Susan Will Coffield Sam Bill Stephen Aidan Pauline Meghan JOHN Laura Mandy Shannon Natalie Scott Rylan Austin
We joined US Navy and industry leaders to talk shipbuilding, maritime autonomy, and the future of naval power - with a very important audience: congressional staff. Thanks to Center for Maritime Strategy and Admiral James G. Foggo (ret.) MSC for hosting our Co-Founder Austin to help educate congressional staff about how we can generate maritime power for our democracy.
🇺🇸 ⚔️ It's hard to understate just how important Congressional leadership has been in advancing maritime autonomy and naval technology. I joined a panel of leaders driving this industry into the future - CAPT Matthew Lewis, Peter Mirisola, Gary Rogeness, and RADM Robert "Bob" Girrier - to help educate congressional staffers about the maritime autonomy space. 🫡 We talked UxVs, autonomy, and shipbuilding. Most of all, we emphasized the importance of thoughtful congressional engagement with our companies and Navy offices. From my shoes, Congress needs to prioritize 5️⃣ lines of attack to make sure we have a very strong Navy a decade from now that includes unmanned vessels: 1️⃣ Pass budgets on time and don't gut core PEs that help drive consistent demand signal 2️⃣ Encourage Navy to buy faster, find better tech, and adopt commercial practices. Support the acquisition innovators in Navy! 3️⃣ Remind DoD to use existing authorities to help companies test and experiment with new tech (insurance and facilities get expensive alone). 4️⃣ Invest in tech that will be much more affordable than legacy platforms. Remember that only the people paying the bills - stewards of taxpayer money - really think about cost 5️⃣ Remember how much CHAOS congressional oversight can cause in program offices and in down-echelon military units when it is ad-hoc. Thanks to Center for Maritime Strategy Admiral James G. Foggo (ret.) MSC Samuel Byers for inviting us and especially for hosting this generation of congressional experts to talk maritime for three whole days.
Our co-founder Austin Gray spoke in Newport News about logistics in a contested environment aka contested logistics - time to get after this problem space 🔥
🌏 ⛓️💥 Still worried about contested logistics in the Pacific? Us too. 😠 🛩️ When I heard it took 73x C-17 flights to relocate a single Patriot battery from the Pacific to the Middle East, I knew we were more fragile even than I had realized... ...and I've been worried about contested logistics for years. 🎤 On August 7th, I had the pleasure of joining Major General (ret) Edward F Dorman III, Colonel Howard Marotto, and Yuta Shiina to talk INDOPACOM, technology, and the major gaps in our force architecture. I'm most worried about 6x gaps: 1️⃣ The Military Sealift Command fleet is more brittle than your grandma's toffee 2️⃣ The United States Marine Corps and US Army have not a single ship, boat, or maritime connector that has a favorable cost and range matchup with Chinese missiles. Zero. 3️⃣ Fuel moves across U.S. Indo-Pacific Command only on fuel-efficient platforms = $800M oilers (or bigger). Only big platforms are fuel efficient. 4️⃣ All the nodes around which our logistics hub-spoke models are built = targets. 5️⃣ Medical ingress supply lines and medevac egress routes compete for the mantle of most fragile logistics category 6️⃣ The organizations above have neither the history, the budget, nor the expertise to rapidly procure capabilities to fill these gaps. Our audience - heavy in Army and Marine Corps logisticians - was no Navy shipbuilding audience. But today, our best hope may be rapid logistics ship procurement. I point to shipbuilding not because I am building ships, but because the physics of buoyancy makes the surface ship - it has been for millenia - the simplest way to transport large quantities of material. 🇺🇸 🏭 With that in mind, we talked shipbuilding supply chains, and I shared Blue Water Autonomy's vision of many small shipyards - which today do not contribute to the defense industrial base - building the ships that can create a resilient logistics web across the vast Pacific. Thanks Greg Lewis and Association of Marine Corps Logisticians for hosting a great Global Expeditionary Logistics Symposium and CC to the great leaders attacking this critical vulnerability to our nation. Aaron Angell Mike Ackman Mike Murray Peter Koch (Cook) Arthur Dubois Phillip Jones Patrick N. Kelleher Todd Greene Gavin Gardner Ben Mathews Joseph G. Kevin Wheeler Carmine Borrelli
🌊 70% of our planet is water. Almost none of it is open to autonomous craft. And that’s about to change. A new wave of startups is redefining how we explore, defend, and use the world’s oceans - above and below the surface: 🚢 Blue Water Autonomy – Boston-based Navy veterans + tech founders building full-sized, open-ocean autonomous warships. Hundreds of tons of steel on the saltwater for testing in year-one, with eyes on deploying alongside manned fleets. Rylan Scott N. Austin 🤖 Vatn Systems – Swarms of underwater drones for secure comms and defense missions in contested waters. Nelson Geoff 🌐 Terradepth – Autonomous submersibles mapping the ocean floor and turning data into actionable insights. 🐟 Blueye Robotics – Agile ROVs for aquaculture, marine research, inspection, and tourism. ☀️ Seasats – Solar-powered surface vessels patrolling for months without refueling. Mike 🔋 Bedrock Ocean Exploration – Fully electric submersibles delivering low-cost, low-emission seafloor mapping. Colin Anthony Charles From drone swarms to self-sailing warships, these pioneers are bringing autonomy to the last, largest untapped domain. The oceans are about to get a whole lot smarter. ⚓🌎 #MaritimeInnovation #Autonomy #USV #UnmannedSystems #DefenseTech #BlueEconomy #AI
Blue Water Autonomy reposted this
As global threats rise and capability gaps widen, former Navy officer and serial robotics entrepreneur Rylan Hamilton is leading Blue Water Autonomy to design a new class of software-defined, modular ships built for autonomy, adaptability, and scale. Hamilton’s journey — from navigating a frigate in the Pacific to co-founding 6 River Systems, Part of Ocado Group — shaped his conviction that the Navy needs smaller, cost-effective, crewless vessels to complement traditional fleets. These ships, built from commercial off-the-shelf components and powered by flexible software architecture, can be updated remotely, configured for any mission, and deployed faster than traditional warships. By acting as “pawns on the chessboard,” Blue Water’s vessels extend reach, gather intelligence, and absorb risk in high-threat regions, protecting high-value crewed ships. The company’s veteran-heavy team brings deep operational insight, ensuring every design decision aligns with real-world mission needs. Read more on Rylan’s entrepreneurial journey and Blue Water’s mission to modernize the Maritime Economy: https://bit.ly/3Uq0scD
Blue Water Autonomy reposted this
Proud to back Rylan Hamilton and the team at Blue Water Autonomy, who are tackling one of the most pressing challenges in national security: How to extend the U.S. Navy’s reach, resilience, and adaptability in an era of rapidly evolving threats. Rylan’s path — from Navy officer to robotics entrepreneur — gives him unmatched insight into the operational realities at sea. Blue Water’s solution? Software-defined, modular, autonomous ships built to deploy quickly, adapt to changing missions, and keep high-value crewed vessels out of harm’s way. This is the type of founder we love to work with at Eclipse: Mission-driven, technically exceptional, and unwilling to accept “that’s impossible” as an answer. The stakes couldn’t be higher, and the opportunity to reshape the future fleet has never been greater!