Candela Scaling Hydrofoil Ferries and Boats

Candela is pushing electric boating beyond a luxury toy into a manufacturing and transit business. The important shift is that its funding and Beneteau tie up were aimed at building more boats, not just better prototypes. That matters because hydrofoils only become a real category if a company can produce leisure craft and passenger ferries at scale, with marine supply chain, factory know how, and service support behind them.

• Candela’s March 2024 round was about €24.5 million, roughly $27 million at the time, and was described as the company’s largest funding round. The money was directed toward ramping production of the P-12 electric ferry, which shows the commercial ferry was central, not adjacent, to the plan.
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• Beneteau’s role matters because it brings industrial boatbuilding capacity. Beneteau operates a multi brand, multi factory manufacturing base, so the partnership gave Candela a path from low volume startup production to repeatable assembly of foil equipped boats, where precision and throughput both matter.
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• This puts Candela on a different path from premium electric boat peers. X Shore has been expanding factory capacity around high end recreational boats, while Navier has been testing hydrofoil economics through Bay Area water taxi pilots. Candela is trying to do both consumer boats and public transport with the same core foil efficiency advantage.
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The next phase is a race to prove that hydrofoils can be manufactured and deployed like a real vessel platform, not a niche demo. If Candela can turn ferry deployments into steady orders while using Beneteau’s production muscle, it will have a stronger route to category leadership than builders focused only on expensive leisure boats.