HavocAI raises $85M to sell autonomous boats to the U.S. military
In the wake of the passage of president Trump’s big, beautiful bill — which allocated billions of dollars for rapid prototyping and AI systems integration for the Department of Defense — startups are in a mad dash to raise capital so they can compete for funding.
One such company is HavocAI, a Rhode Island-based startup that demonstrated its autonomous ships last summer and is already selling boats to the US military and its allies. HavocAI closed an $85 million venture funding round at the end of September so it can prepare to manufacture thousands of self-driving boats and integrate its autonomous technology suite into new types of vessels at a moment’s notice, says CEO and co-founder Paul Lewin. luck.
“When the reconciliation bill came out, all our existing investors said, ‘Hey, don’t try to raise money and take six months to do it.’ They said, ‘You have to work fast,’” Lewin says.
HavocAI raised the new round within three months, boosting the startup’s total funding to nearly $100 million since the company launched last January, Lewin said. This latest round – which included venture capital firms B Capital, Up.Partners, Scout Ventures, and Outlander Ventures; the CIA’s venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel; Defense giant and strategic partner Lockheed Martin; Taiwan’s public-private venture capital fund, Taiwania Capital, will position the startup to compete for a portion of the more than $3.3 billion that the new legislation has set aside specifically for the development of medium and small unmanned surface ships. Lwin declined to provide an evaluation.
HavocAI’s strategy revolves around manufacturing speed and affordability, Lewin says. The US military leadership has complained for years about the long and expensive shipbuilding process in the United States. It could take years and hundreds of millions of dollars for contractors to build a ship for the US Navy. For example, a medium-sized naval vessel, such as a frigate, can take about six years to manufacture, compared to a typical merchant ship’s one or two years – largely due to advanced technology and more stringent, mission-specific requirements.
But Lewin says commercial boats would work well in the defense sector as well. “It’s not the boat that you need to reinvent,” he says. “What you need to invent are the technologies to turn these boats into robots and connect them to each other,” he says.
HavocAI works with commercial boat manufacturers to build HavocAI standard-sized boats, then updates those vessels with its own autonomous software — using AI algorithms and perception models similar to what you might see in a self-driving car.
HavocAI debuted its product last summer at “Silent Swarm,” a two-week demo event hosted by the Navy. After the event, the Navy immediately purchased dozens of HavocAI’s 14-foot-long prototype “Rampage” ships for $100,000 apiece, Lewin says.
“We want our ships to be priced similarly to ammunition, where if you burn it out, use it up, or it blows up, it’s no big deal — you still have thousands of them,” Lewin says. “The price point is part of the Rampage ship product,” he says, though he notes that larger ships — like the ones HavocAI has begun working on with Lockheed Martin — will be more expensive.
Since the Silent Swarm project, HavocAI has commissioned another 20 of its boats as a contractor for the U.S. Army, Navy and Defense Innovation Unit, and has begun integrating its technology into the 38-foot Seahound and the 42-foot Kaikoa, according to the company. HavocAI is currently testing one 100-foot “Atlas” vessel on the waters in Rhode Island.
Both Lewin and co-founder Joe Turner have backgrounds in the military. Lwin, a refugee from Myanmar who came to the United States with his family when he was 10, flew EA-6B Prowlers for the Navy. Turner, HavocAI’s chief operating officer, was a former Navy surface officer before co-founding the autonomous systems company, where Lwin will also serve as chief technology officer. The two co-founded HavocAI in January 2024.
Lewin envisions that the Navy and U.S. allies will be able to use the boats to create a sensor network distributed across thousands of ships, so that militaries can get a better view over wide geographic areas. He says the Army and Marines can also use the 14-foot boats to transport up to 300 pounds of supplies without putting people in danger. Poland appears to be testing HavocAI boats in order to collect intelligence against Russia in the Baltic Sea.
Since the company’s founding last January, HavocAI has grown to 80 people. Boatbuilder Metal Shark announced Thursday that it will integrate the HavocAI autonomous platform across its existing fleet of unmanned surface vessels.
HavocAI was one of a series of US defense technology companies, including RapidFlight, Kratos Unmanned Aerial Systems and Cyberlux, that China imposed sanctions on at the end of last year for selling US weapons to Taiwan. There are now several self-driving boating startups that have emerged to compete in the market, including Blue Water Autonomy.
2025-10-09 16:00:00
