HavocAI

HavocAI raised an $85 million Series B in October 2025, bringing total funding to approximately $97 million. The Series B was led by B Capital with participation from In-Q-Tel, Lockheed Martin Ventures, Hanwha, Taiwania Capital, Scout Ventures, Outlander Ventures, and Up Partners.

The company previously raised an $11 million seed round in September 2024. The seed round included early investors focused on defense technology and autonomous systems.

The October 2025 funding round earmarked capital for operating in non-US areas of responsibility for attritable maritime drones. The company doubled its employee count from approximately 40 to 80 between mid-2025 and October 2025.

HavocAI builds a collaborative autonomy stack that lets a single operator command swarms of unmanned surface and aerial vehicles. The system consists of three integrated components for autonomous maritime operations.

Havoc Control is the browser-based mission command interface where operators plan, task, and override vessels from a single screen. Users can drag-select groups of vessels on a map and assign pre-built operational plays such as domain awareness patrol.

Havoc Cloud provides an adaptive SATCOM and mesh network layer that maintains communication between vessels and operators even when GPS or primary communication links face jamming. The boats negotiate routes among themselves and share sensor data through the network architecture.

Havoc OS runs the onboard autonomy that fuses perception, navigation, and collision avoidance capabilities. This lets each craft operate as an intelligent agent within larger swarm formations.

The hardware portfolio spans multiple vessel classes, all running the same Havoc OS for unified command and control. Rampage is the smallest platform at around 15 feet with all-electric propulsion, 300-pound payload capacity, and 100 nautical mile range combining solar and battery power.

Kaikoa vessels range from 20 to 42 feet with diesel propulsion, 40-knot speeds, and 3,640-pound payload capacity. Seahound is 38 feet with 1,000 nautical mile endurance and 1,000-pound payload.

The company is developing larger platforms including the 100-foot Atlas and a 200-foot vessel being co-designed with Hanwha Defense USA. All platforms can be retrofitted to third-party hulls, including Metal Shark's HSMUSV line.

HavocAI operates a software-defined boats approach where the autonomy, communications, and operator-facing systems carry the primary value proposition. The company focuses on upgrading and integrating commercial vessels rather than vertically integrating hull design and manufacturing.

This modular architecture allows HavocAI to apply its autonomy stack across different vessel form factors while keeping hulls commoditized. The approach structurally pushes costs down and iteration speeds up compared to competitors who vertically integrate expensive hull development.

The business model maps directly to the Navy's emphasis on small, low-cost, unmanned, and smart platforms. By delivering credible autonomy on $100k platforms, HavocAI enables asymmetric advantages against adversaries using million-dollar missiles to target these vessels.

Revenue comes from both hardware sales and software licensing, with the company demonstrating ability to retrofit existing vessels in hours during trials. This creates expansion opportunities beyond manufacturing new hulls to licensing the autonomy stack to existing government and commercial fleets.

The company has secured direct purchases from DoD customers rather than relying on lengthy prototype and development contracts. Early purchases represent actual procurement rather than test-and-learn budget lines, though sustained growth requires follow-on orders and integration into repeatable contracting vehicles.

HavocAI partners with shipyards like Hanwha for hull supply rather than building internal manufacturing capacity. This asset-light approach for physical production allows focus on software iteration while leveraging established maritime manufacturing expertise.

Anduril partners with HD Hyundai to build modular autonomous surface vessels from 55 to 200 feet for the Navy's MASC program. The partnership combines Anduril's Lattice autonomy with HD's global shipyard capacity and Hadrian's automated fabrication to aim for faster steel-hull production at scale.

L3Harris and Austal are incumbent MUSV contractors with large production capacity and established Navy procurement channels. Their new Vantage-class 25-meter and 55-meter optionally-crewed vessels leverage existing relationships but often have slower software iteration cycles and higher cost structures.

HII partners with Shield AI on the Romulus USV line, combining HII's shipbuilding expertise with Shield's Hivemind cross-domain autonomy. The partnership completed early trials in October 2025, marking adoption of startup autonomy capabilities by established defense contractors.

Sea Machines has delivered over 200 SM300 autonomy packages worldwide and released APIs in 2025 that allow other command and control suites to task SM300-equipped boats. This creates direct competition for HavocAI's collaborative autonomy approach.

Shield AI's Hivemind autonomy software operates across air, land, and sea domains with partnerships including Airbus, Kratos, and L3Harris licensing the technology. The cross-domain approach and established licensing model present competition for software-only expansion opportunities.

Saronic builds autonomous surface vessels ranging from 6-foot scout boats to 150-foot platforms, securing a $392 million Navy production contract within three years of founding. Saronic's pace of contract awards and direct Navy relationships create competitive pressure in the fast attack and reconnaissance segments.

European and allied defense contractors are developing competing autonomous maritime systems as NATO countries increase procurement of unmanned vessels. These competitors benefit from local relationships and regulatory familiarity in their home markets.

Chinese autonomous vessel development represents strategic competition, with state-backed companies potentially offering lower-cost alternatives to allied nations seeking maritime autonomy capabilities without US technology dependencies.

HavocAI is expanding from small 14-foot Rampage vessels to larger platforms including 42-foot Kaikoa, 100-foot Atlas, and 200-foot vessels through the Hanwha partnership. Each hull class runs the same collaborative autonomy stack, enabling capture of different mission spectrums from force protection to long-range strike without rewriting software.

The company demonstrated multi-domain control capabilities in December 2025 trials in Portugal, linking HavocAI surface vessels with aerial drones in GPS-denied conditions. This opens opportunities in joint human-machine teaming and counter-access missions sought by NATO partners.

Software-only licensing represents significant expansion potential, with Project Convergence trials showing HavocAI porting its autonomy to pontoon boats within hours. This creates pathways to license the stack to existing government and commercial vessels beyond manufactured platforms.

Foreign military customers including Ukraine, Polish special operations forces, and Indo-Pacific allies have requested demonstrations. The Series B funding specifically supports operations in non-US areas of responsibility, positioning HavocAI to capture rapidly growing allied demand for attritable maritime drones.

The November 2025 SAIC partnership integrates HavocAI data onto Link-16 and Joint Range Extension backbone systems, making the vessels discoverable and taskable by Army, Air Force, Marines, and Space Force. This multiplies the domestic user pool beyond Navy-specific applications.

Commercial applications in offshore wind, port operations, and subsea infrastructure create dual-use revenue streams that insulate the company from defense budget cycles while expanding addressable markets beyond military procurement.

The Hanwha partnership embeds large-vessel production capacity within the US while leveraging Korean shipyards for surge manufacturing. This addresses congressional pressure to field autonomous vessel numbers quickly for China deterrence scenarios.

NATO and European Union adoption of forthcoming Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships codes reduces regulatory friction for autonomous vessels in European waters. This broadens addressable markets for HavocAI's collision avoidance and remote operator capabilities across allied maritime corridors.

AUKUS alliance coordination between Australia, UK, and US creates procurement pathway synergies where single platform sales to US military unlock opportunities across member nations facing similar doctrinal pressure to shift toward distributed autonomous networks.

Procurement concentration: HavocAI's early success depends heavily on direct DoD purchases, but sustained growth requires integration into repeatable contracting vehicles and follow-on orders. Early direct buys can still represent test-and-learn budget lines rather than committed long-term procurement programs, creating revenue sustainability risks if the company cannot demonstrate clear pathways to scaled, recurring military contracts.

Technology commoditization: The collaborative autonomy stack faces potential commoditization as larger defense contractors develop competing software capabilities and open-source autonomous vessel technologies mature. Sea Machines' API release and Shield AI's cross-domain licensing model demonstrate how autonomy software could become standardized, reducing HavocAI's differentiation and pricing power in the software-defined boats approach.

Manufacturing dependencies: The asset-light model creates strategic vulnerabilities through reliance on shipyard partners like Hanwha for hull production and scaling capacity. Supply chain disruptions, partner relationship changes, or capacity constraints at key manufacturing partners could limit HavocAI's ability to fulfill large orders and compete with vertically integrated competitors who control their own production capabilities.