Blue Water Autonomy
Boston shipbuilder developing the Liberty Class, a 190-ft crewless steel ship for the US Navy; $64M from GV and Eclipse; first hull building at Conrad Shipyard.
Background
Blue Water Autonomy was founded in Boston in 2024 by three veterans of the Navy and the Boston robotics cluster. Rylan Hamilton, CEO, served as a Navy engineering and surface warfare officer, led early deployments at Amazon Robotics, and co-founded warehouse-automation firm 6 River Systems, which Shopify bought for $450 million. Scott Miller, CTO, was an early iRobot engineer and later its VP of engineering through the Roomba scale-up and IPO, then founded Dragon Innovation, acquired by Avnet.
Austin Gray, CSO, is a former Navy intelligence officer who volunteered in a Ukrainian drone factory after finishing MIT and Harvard degrees. The company left stealth in April 2025, already salt-water testing a roughly 100-ton vessel outside Boston. Its first product, the Liberty Class unveiled in February 2026, is a 190-foot steel autonomous ship built on Damen's Stan Patrol 6009 Axe Bow hull, its engine room and electrical systems re-architected for months-long crewless operation — over 10,000 nautical miles of range and more than 150 metric tons of payload.
Linked records
Wired to the rest of BattlePolicy — the systems it builds in the Lexicon and the contracts it wins in the Procurement Tracker. Every link below is a record in our own datasets.
- none linked yet
Financial footing
- $14M seed led by Eclipse Ventures with Riot Ventures and Impatient Ventures, announced April 11, 2025 at the stealth exit
- $50M Series A led by GV with Eclipse and Riot returning, announced August 26, 2025 — $64M total disclosed
- Held US Navy R&D contracts of undisclosed value as of August 2025
- First 190-foot Liberty Class ship began construction at Conrad Shipyard (Louisiana) in March 2026, with the company targeting late-2026 completion for the Navy under an unnamed program of record
- Positioned for the Navy's $6B+ Modular Attack Surface Craft (MASC) medium-USV effort
- Damen hull license (Feb 2026) plus manufacturing partnerships with Tulip, Caterpillar Defense, Precise Power Systems, and Valstad (May 2026)
- Backers: GV (Series A lead), Eclipse Ventures (seed lead), Riot Ventures, Impatient Ventures
Disclosed funding totals $64 million across two rounds. A $14 million seed, announced April 11, 2025 at the stealth exit, was led by Eclipse Ventures with Riot Ventures and Impatient Ventures. A $50 million Series A followed on August 26, 2025, led by GV, with Eclipse and Riot returning.
Valuation has not been disclosed, and no Series B had been announced as of July 2026. The company says the Liberty Class was developed entirely with private capital — unusual for a full-sized Navy ship — so venture money is funding steel construction as well as software. It also held Navy R&D contracts as of August 2025; their values have not been made public.
Major customers & contracts
Joined live from the Procurement & Contracts Tracker — real award/announcement records.
| Customer | System | Scale / detail | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Japan | Red Cat Variant 7 unmanned surface vessel | — | signed |
| Denmark | Chaff & Flares for the Royal Danish Air Force | 654000000 DKK | signed |
Further disclosed customers & programs (public reporting):
The US Navy is the declared first customer. Blue Water held unspecified Navy R&D contracts by August 2025, and says the first Liberty Class ship — construction began at Conrad Shipyard in March 2026 — will be completed for the Navy in late 2026 under a program of record. It has not named the program or a contract value, and the Navy has not publicly confirmed an award.
The evident target is the Modular Attack Surface Craft (MASC), the restructured medium-USV effort the company puts at more than $6 billion, for which co-founder Austin Gray says Liberty meets or exceeds all requirements; MASC prototype OTA awards were expected between October 2025 and September 2026. Production partners include Conrad Shipyard (agreement signed September 2025; five Louisiana and Texas yards), Damen as hull licensor, and, from May 2026, Tulip, Caterpillar Defense, Precise Power Systems, and Valstad. The company claims commercial and additional government demand but has named no non-Navy customer.
Leadership & contact surface
Leadership: Rylan Hamilton
Official site: https://www.blw.ai
Competitive position
Blue Water sits between the small-USV builders and the primes. Saronic — which raised $600 million at a $4 billion valuation in 2025 and bought Louisiana shipbuilder Gulf Craft to build its 150-foot Marauder — is the closest and far better-capitalized rival for the Navy's medium-USV money. HavocAI plays smaller and cheaper; Anduril brings a broad maritime line and deep Pentagon relationships; BlackSea Technologies already delivers small USVs to the Navy; Vatn Systems builds autonomous undersea vehicles, an adjacent segment.
Traditional yards can weld hulls but lack autonomy stacks. Blue Water's edge is discipline: a licensed, proven Damen hull cuts design risk, its multi-partner production model avoids Saronic's owned-shipyard capital burden, and its founders have shipped robots at industrial scale. Weaknesses: a war chest an order of magnitude below Saronic's, no owned yard, and no publicly confirmed program award.
Battlefield relevance
No Blue Water vessel has seen combat, and the first ship has yet to hit the water. The relevance is structural: the Navy's hybrid-fleet plans need unmanned hulls to add missile, sensor, and logistics capacity its shipbuilding base cannot deliver crewed — above all for a Pacific fight, where Liberty's 10,000-nautical-mile range and two-to-three-month unmanned endurance are the selling points.
Ukraine's USVs showed cheap crewless craft can hurt a fleet, but those are largely one-way attack boats; Blue Water is betting the harder requirement is reusable, ocean-crossing ships, with MASC as the demand signal.
Sources & verification
- TechCrunch — Blue Water Autonomy comes out of stealth promising autonomous naval ships (2025-04-11)
- Fortune — Exclusive: Blue Water Autonomy raises GV-led $50 million Series A to build unmanned ships (2025-08-26)
- The Robot Report — Blue Water Autonomy nets $50M to build autonomous ships (2025-08-26)
- Breaking Defense — Maritime tech startup Blue Water Autonomy, Conrad Shipyard sign deal for USV production (2025-09-25)
- PR Newswire (company) — Blue Water Autonomy Introduces Liberty Class, a 190-Foot Autonomous Ship for the US Navy (2026-02-11)
- gCaptain — A Privately Funded Autonomous Warship Puts a New Navy Shipbuilding Model to the Test (2026-02-11)
- WorkBoat — Blue Water Autonomy raises $14 million for unmanned Navy ship (2025-04-21)
- Ocean News & Technology — Blue Water Autonomy Unveils Multi-Partner Manufacturing Model to Scale Next-Generation Shipbuilding (2026-05-07)
- GlobalSecurity.org — Modular Attack Surface Craft (MASC) program overview (2026-05-18)
- Blue Water Autonomy — company site, leadership bios