Insider Brief
- Blue Water Autonomy raised $50 million in Series A funding led by GV, with participation from Eclipse, Riot, and Impatient Ventures, bringing its total funding to $64 million since April 2025.
- The Boston-based company will use the funding to build and deploy its first long-range, full-sized autonomous ship next year, advancing efforts to deliver producible, affordable unmanned vessels for U.S. Navy maritime security and logistics missions.
- Backed by Navy veterans and shipbuilding experts, Blue Water is positioned to capitalize on Pentagon priorities for autonomous vessels amid rising pressure from China’s shipbuilding dominance, while also eyeing broader commercial maritime applications.
PRESS RELEASE – Blue Water Autonomy, a Boston-based technology and shipbuilding company designing and building highly producible unmanned ships for the U.S. Navy, announced today $50 million in Series A funding led by GV. All existing investors, Eclipse, Riot, and Impatient Ventures, participated. Today’s announcement follows Blue Water’s $14M seed round announced in April 2025, bringing the company’s total funding raised to $64M. As part of today’s news, GV Managing Partner Dave Munichiello joins the company’s Board of Directors.
With this funding, Blue Water Autonomy will build and deploy its first long-range, full-sized autonomous ship next year. Since the seed round, the team has quadrupled in size, completed successful on water engineering tests, and started acquiring long lead material from more than 50 selected suppliers.
“There is an urgent need for autonomous ships designed specifically for maritime security and logistics. This funding gives our team the resources to build long-range autonomous ships from the keel up that will operate on the open ocean for months at a time,” said CEO Rylan Hamilton. “Blue Water Autonomy is laser-focused on perfecting a single platform class. This intentional strategy ensures unmatched quality, speed to market, and reliability from day one.”
China is dominating global shipbuilding with over 200 times greater shipbuilding capacity than the U.S., growing its combat fleet with new naval tonnage while U.S. warship production stalls. Pentagon leadership has accelerated plans for autonomous vessels that will help bolster the fleet, leveraging $2.1B in new Congressional funding for the medium-sized unmanned surface vessels like those Blue Water Autonomy builds.
Future unmanned ships must be producible, affordable platforms that can deliver varied payloads, while complementing and supporting the advanced capabilities of traditional naval assets. While focused on initial naval applications, Blue Water’s leadership sees massive opportunity in commercial maritime markets that are replete with dull, dangerous, and dirty jobs at sea.
Blue Water Autonomy’s team consists of proven founders and Navy veterans, bringing the deep understanding, urgency, and experience necessary to help deliver overdue innovation to America’s sailors and warfighters. The team recently opened a Washington D.C. office and has grown to include shipbuilding veterans with a track record of delivering 30+ ships to the U.S. Navy, including complex destroyers and amphibious ships, and DARPA’s fully autonomous NOMARS. Fusing shipbuilding and robotics talent gives Blue Water Autonomy unique credibility and ability to innovate, iterate, and scale.
“I’ve had the privilege of working with Rylan for nearly two decades, from our time at Kiva Systems through Shopify’s acquisition of his robotics company,” said Dave Munichiello, Managing Partner at GV. “As a former military officer myself, I’ve seen how great leaders are forged through experience, and Rylan exemplifies that—pairing vision with disciplined execution. At Blue Water, he’s assembled a world-class team to autonomize maritime defense, addressing a mission as urgent as it is consequential.”
