Saildrone Raises $100 Million to Advance Ocean Intelligence Products

Saildrone builds ocean-going, fully autonomous vehicles that have already traveled over 500,000 nautical miles and clocked more than 15,000 days at sea in some of the harshest conditions on the planet. From the ice edge in the high Arctic to the inhospitable Southern Ocean, Saildrone’s unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) have proven their exceptional endurance and ability to collect rich, high precision data for climate, weather, ocean-floor mapping, and maritime security applications. 

Lux first backed Saildrone in its 2016 Series A financing, and I joined their Board. Now we are incredibly excited they have announced a new $100 million round of financing led by Bond Capital to power their ambitious mission. The company has refueled to further push the boundaries of what is possible with autonomous ocean-going systems. 

Saildrone’s products are based on data collected from a fleet of USVs that are powered primarily by renewable wind and solar power. Saildrone USVs are the most reliable unmanned vehicles on the planet, carrying dozens of sensors on board for air, water surface, and subsurface measurements. Saildrone serves customers in multiple sectors: from governmental organizations responsible for environmental science, climate monitoring, and oceans management, to commercial enterprises participating in the Blue (maritime) Economy (~$400 billion contribution to the U.S. GDP, and ~€750 billion turnover in the European Union), Marine Domain Awareness (MDA) and Defense. Needless to say, as investors we think this is a massive opportunity.

We often say that Saildrone is an n- of- 1 company. It is special in its dedication to the mission, its technical prowess in an extremely complex space, and its relentless focus on execution. Founder Richard Jenkins and the team are building the next major platform for earth observation. Lux has been fortunate to support Saildrone since its early days: from recruiting senior management executives, Board members, and advisors, to advice on scaling hardware/software operations, and building government and defense-related sales capabilities. 

The new financing will be used to grow Saildrone’s data insight teams and scale go-to-market functions to meet the rapidly growing demand for ocean domain intelligence. If you are looking for a new challenge, now is the time to join this oceanic rocketship.

Also, check out video footage released last week when Saildrone (SD 1045) navigated to the heart of Hurricane Sam, in a world- first, taking scientific measurements and HD video, that stands to transform our understanding of hurricane forecasting (also see NOAA, NYTimes, CNN, USA Today, The Smithsonian, Washington Post, NPR).