Some startups chase waves. Seasats builds them. Out of San Diego, where the Pacific is less postcard and more proving ground, Seasats just pulled in a $20 million Series A to scale production of its small uncrewed surface vehicles. Not toy boats with WiFi. Long-endurance autonomous surface vessels built for defense, commercial operators, and researchers who prefer data over drama. Konvoy Ventures led the round, with Shield Capital, DNS Capital, Techstars, Tanis Venture Management, Crumpton Ventures, Dorado Group, and a slate of strategic investors leaning in. Smart capital betting on saltwater steel and software that does not blink.
Credit where it is due. Mike Flanigan, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, has been steering this thing from Rhode Island grit to West Coast execution. Dylan Rodriguez, Co-Founder, helped turn an early obsession with autonomy into something the Department of War now takes seriously. Max Kramers, Co-Founder and operations engineer by trade and temperament, has been designing and building the guts that keep these vessels alive when the ocean tries to humble them. Kerwin, Co-Founder, part of the original quartet, helped light the fuse years ago. Four friends who grew up sailing together and decided the sea deserved better hardware.
This Series A does not float alone. Seasats has also been awarded $24 million in APFIT funding from the Department of War, recommended by the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps, to accelerate fielding of its autonomous surface vessels. That is not a science fair ribbon. That is validation at operational velocity. More than $40 million in total funding to date. Over $100 million in U.S. government contracts awarded. The signal is clear. The market is not experimenting anymore. It is procuring.
What Seasats understands is simple and rare. The ocean is big. Crewed vessels are expensive. Risk compounds quickly when humans are required to babysit machines. So Seasats builds electric, long-endurance ASVs that carry sensors and payloads for the dull, dirty, and dangerous work. Surveillance. Environmental monitoring. Maritime security. The kind of missions where persistence wins and ego loses.
For defense customers, this means scalable maritime autonomy that can be deployed without burning through budgets or people. For commercial and research partners, it means persistent data collection without chartering a ship every time you need answers. Lower cost. Lower risk. Higher frequency. That math works in any language.
The business takeaway is not mysterious. Build something that works in the real world. Prove it in open water, not just in a slide deck. Align with customers who have urgent problems and the budget to solve them. Then raise capital to scale what is already moving, not what you hope might move someday.
Seasats is not chasing hype cycles. It is stacking contracts, scaling production, and letting the ocean test every line of code. And when the Navy and Marine Corps recommend you for accelerated procurement, that is not luck. That is product meeting moment.
