Seasats is turning autonomous surface vessels into a naval data infrastructure layer

Seasats raised $20 million in Series A funding on February 17, 2026, with Konvoy Ventures leading and Shield Capital, DNS Capital, Techstars, Tanis Venture Management, Crumpton Ventures, Dorado Group, and others participating. The round came after a visible defense procurement stack: more than $100 million in U.S. government contracts, an $89 million SBIR Phase III contract, and a $24 million APFIT award recommended by the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps.

SeaSatellites, Inc. was founded in San Diego in 2020 after the SCOUT Transatlantic project, where members of the founding engineering cohort built an uncrewed surface vessel for autonomous ocean transit. Mike Flanigan is CEO, Dylan Rodriguez is CTO, Max Kramers leads vehicle design, and Dan Flanigan is founder emeritus.

The vessel family gives Seasats a distributed maritime ladder. Lightfish is the portable persistence layer: a 305-pound autonomous surface vessel with up to six months of endurance, 66 pounds of payload capacity, solar-electric power with hybrid reserve, HD cameras, Iridium and Starlink communications, and onboard AI for edge processing and target classification. Seasats has disclosed operations with U.S. Navy Task Force 59 in the Middle East, Task Force 66 in Europe, scientific research missions off Australia, and maritime security patrols in Argentina.

Quickfish adds a faster interceptor layer above Lightfish, while Heavyfish is the largest planned hull in the same staircase. Quickfish completed an eight-day continuous sea trial in March 2026, with a 450-pound payload, 35-plus-knot speed, and an integrated UAV payload bay. Heavyfish is listed with a 2026 splash date, 9,000-pound weight, 1,000-pound payload capacity, and 12-knot top speed.

The competitive field includes Saildrone, Saronic, Anduril maritime systems, MARTAC, L3Harris unmanned vessels, Sea Machines, and Navy-led autonomy programs. Seasats' distinction is small, persistent, modular surface vessels that can be fielded as distributed maritime sensors or payload carriers without the cost profile of larger autonomous ships.

Public procurement records do not disclose delivered units, active fleet counts by customer, production cadence, mission availability, or long-duration autonomy performance across the vessel family. The strategic question is whether Seasats can turn government contract pathways and modular hulls into a deployable maritime mesh. If Lightfish, Quickfish, and Heavyfish scale together, the company becomes a small-vessel infrastructure layer for naval sensing, patrol, and payload distribution.

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