Why we're backing Saronic Technologies and their mission to redefine US maritime superiority
Ensemble is excited to announce our investment in the Series A for Saronic Technologies, alongside Caffeinated Capital (lead), 8VC, U.S. Innovative Technology, Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Point72 Ventures, Silent Ventures, Overmatch Ventures, and Cubit Capital.
Founded in 2022, Saronic Technologies is a defense technology company building Autonomous Surface Vessels (ASVs) or “maritime drones.”
Background
The Navy is currently struggling with significant challenges in both quantity and cost. With a fleet numbering 'only' around 300 ships, the United States is faced with a declining shipbuilding industrial base unable to manufacture ships at a relevant speed or scale. Adding to the fiscal strain is the exorbitant cost associated with each ship; for instance, aircraft carriers can cost over $10 billion, and are crewed by approximately 5,000 U.S. Sailors. Destroyers, nuclear-powered submarines, and other platforms in the Navy’s fleet all follow suit with high costs and long production timelines that are often delayed and over budget. Additionally, when these vessels are deployed, they often carry crippling sustainment costs for the duration of their service.
Meanwhile, US adversaries have been investing in naval capabilities and developing advanced technologies such as missiles capable of hitting ships from a long distance, diminishing the effectiveness of our current fleet unless augmented by autonomous platforms that can extend the range, capability, and survivability of these ships.
Saronic’s ASVs act in swarms of small, cheap, autonomous boats that augment larger naval vessels and can be employed for a variety of tactical mission use cases to deliver increased effects and protect lives.
In contrast to traditional carriers and battleships, ASVs are “attritable” – cost-effective and able to be produced at scale. This approach allows the Navy to fill the gap in its current shipbuilding capacity as it contends with growing maritime threats from America’s foes.
The Navy’s approach is adapting to the challenges of the present, moving from…
Large and easy to target —> Small and difficult to defeat
Hundreds of ships —> Thousands of platforms
Military personnel on board —> Fully autonomous
Very expensive —> Cost effect and ‘attritable’
Multiple years to build —> Rapidly produced at scale
Inflexible ‘fixed’ platforms —> Modular and flexible
Saronic not only manufactures the boats, but also ensures complete integration of the hardware and software within its platform. This seamless integration enhances the efficiency of deploying new vessels when needed. Saronic’s early team includes military veterans, top technologists from across industry and software experts from Anduril, a defense technology company building leading autonomous systems.
We were introduced to Saronic through Evan Loomis, co-founder of ICON. Our backing of Saronic is the continuation of the theme we began with our ICON investment: we love companies developing thoughtful approaches to fully integrating hardware and software solutions.
Saronic capitalizes on a clear market opportunity, aligning with the US DoD's shift toward smaller, adaptable, and autonomous platforms. There's a pressing need for a unique, scalable solution, as existing products fall short of meeting the Navy's functional requirements.
The team has moved incredibly quickly and has brought to market their first ASV in just six months. With seasoned startup veterans, extensive commercial expertise, and direct connections to US Navy decision-makers from years of service, they form an ideal team for this mission.
You can learn more about the announcement here.
We sat down with Saronic Co-Founder and CEO, Dino Mavrookas, for additional context around his journey, the Saronic story, building teams across military and civilian personnel, and the key challenge of scaling vertically integrated processes in the production of naval vessels.
Dino: The Calling
On September 11, 2001, Dino, a junior studying computer engineering at Rutgers University, was only forty-five minutes away from lower Manhattan. On that fateful day, he felt a profound call to serve in the nation's defense: "That was it." After graduating, Dino enlisted in the Navy, dedicating 11 years to service with SEAL Team 2 and the Naval Special Warfare Development Group.
After leaving the Navy in 2015, Dino earned an MBA at Wharton and spent five years in private equity, predominantly as a software investor at Austin's Vista Equity Partners. Reflecting on his purpose, he decided to bridge his experiences in the military and private sector to focus on national security and defense.
In March 2022, Dino left Vista and began his journey to form Saronic Technologies.
Saronic’s mission-centric culture bridges military and civilian minds
Asked whether there were unique challenges in bringing military and civilian talents under one roof, Dino highlights that seamlessly merging military and civilian talents hinges on an unwavering commitment to the end user's mission. For Saronic, this means exclusively focusing on the US Navy's ideal use cases, made possible by their vertically integrated platform across hardware and software, free from the constraints of legacy systems.
“One of the unique things we’ve been able to do is connect the best-and-brightest engineers to military end users to develop the advanced solutions that the DoD needs. We are building our platforms around the missions that the Navy needs to accomplish, not asking the end user to sacrifice mission capabilities to adopt legacy solutions. What does the Navy want to do with our products? Let’s build around that.”
Saronic signed two agreements with the Navy within 90 days of founding, which allowed an early opportunity for direct engagement between Saronic’s engineers and Navy personnel. Dino emphasized the importance of getting a view into the Navy’s specific requirements to allow Saronic to map their process to the end goal.
Saronic follows a simple rule – understand the mission and then build platforms that can meet the mission in the most effective manner and provide the capabilities needed at the speed and the scale needed. “Before we designed and built our first boat, we understood the various mission sets and requirements from range, payload capacity and integration, and launch and recovery, and built in those capabilities from the ground up.”
Then comes the understanding of the end goals for software and autonomy: “What missions are you enabling through those physical characteristics? There are several missions from intelligence gathering to targeting as well as kinetic options. How do you enable data fusion across platforms to enable collaborative teaming in comms-denied and GPS-denied environments to meet the mission?” Pinpointing the intended use cases at the outset crystallizes Saronic’s approach to vertically integrating the entire process.
Saronic putting it all together: it’s all about scale
“You can design and build the best boat and write the best software code, and if you can’t put both of those things together and build thousands of platforms that deliver the capabilities needed at the scale needed, it doesn’t move the needle on the maritime fight.”
Estimates show that US shipbuilding capabilities today are orders of magnitude behind those of China. Shipbuilding in the US is “just not what it used to be,” Dino says. “The only way we close that gap with China is through attritable, cost-effective, easily-produced-at-scale autonomous systems.” While those systems are more advanced in the aerial and sub-sea domains, Dino says “the autonomous platforms on the surface are far behind in terms of technological adoption and will not scale.”
That’s where Saronic comes in, leading the industry with its vertically integrated process for manufacturing naval vessels. “We build the hardware from the ground up. We write our own software, and then we do all of that to scale. Scalability is the name of the game.”
Dino compared the maritime industry’s development to that of self-driving cars, with a tendency to apply autonomous technology to legacy vehicle designs, rather than letting the mission of autonomy dictate the vehicle’s design from the ground up. “Boats have been adapted to drive themselves, and that’s not really fulfilling the autonomous missions of the Navy, nor does it scale at the speed and quantity that the Navy needs it to, both in pure manufacturing and in operability.”
Saronic is positioned to deliver the solutions the Navy needs.
“We are 100% mission-focused. It’s something that we’ve built into the DNA of the company. Every single person on our team is passionate about the mission… about the national security and defense of our country. It is very exciting for me to see this country’s best-and-brightest dedicate their careers to military defense to keep our country safe and preserve the freedoms we all enjoy.”
Saronic’s mission is critical. If you’re looking to get on board, you can find out more here.