Autonomous ship startup Kraken raises $175M at $1B valuation

Kraken Technology Group Ltd., a British defense startup that makes autonomous ships, has raised $175 million in funding.

Private equity firm DTCP led the Series B deal. It was joined by the U.K. government’s British Business Bank, the NATO Innovation Fund and more than a half-dozen others. Kraken disclosed in its announcement of the round today that its valuation has increased to $1 billion.

Kraken’s most advanced vessel is a 36-foot-long ship called the K5 Kraken that operates without a crew. It has a top speed of 50 knots, which corresponds to about 57 miles per second. Kraken says that it can stay at sea for up to a month at a time and cover 1,000 nautical miles. 

Customers can pilot the K5 remotely or entrust navigation to an onboard autonomy system. The system makes steering decisions based on data collected by radar and sonar sensors built into the K5. Sonar technology, which uses soundwaves to map out the environment, enables ships to track underwater objects.

Operators can extend the K5’s capabilities by adding custom modules. For example, a customer looking to enhance the vessel’s sensing capabilities could add a towed sonar array. That’s a submerged cable equipped with sensors optimized to detect underwater activity.

Kraken offers the K5 alongside two smaller ships that are designed for other missions.

The K4 Manta is a 18-feet-long autonomous vessel that resembles a manta ray. According to Kraken, it can alternate between floating like a regular ship and diving at depths of more than 30 feet. That capability makes the vessel particularly useful for reconnaissance tasks.

Like the larger K5, the K4 is customizable. It’s capable of carrying up to 220 pounds of equipment per trip. Kraken says that customers can swap the ship’s payload in a few minutes.

Rounding out the company’s product portfolio is a compact vessel called the K3 Scout that is light enough to be deployed from the air. It can cover up to 650 nautical miles per trip with a top speed of about 28 miles per hour.

Kraken’s funding milestone comes a few weeks after it inked a shipbuilding partnership with Anduril Industries Inc., a fellow defense technology startup. The companies plan to manufacture two autonomous ships in the US. The first is Kraken’s existing K5 system while the other is an upcoming long-range vessel called the K7. The company stated today that it plans to announce more manufacturing partnerships in the near future. 

“This significant funding round will accelerate Kraken’s global roll-out, enabling the deployment of hardened, reliable, mission-ready capabilities for NATO and its worldwide partners at an unprecedented scale in the maritime domain,” said Kraken founder and Chief Executive Officer Mal Crease.

Photo: Kraken