DEPLOYDatabase

Company

Ocean Aero

Ocean Aero is a US-based marine robotics company developing autonomous surface and subsea vehicles for ocean monitoring, defense, and commercial applications.

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Founded
2012
HQ
San Diego, California, USA
Status
private (~$60.2M raised)

Models

1

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Key facts

Product

Triton AUSV (autonomous underwater and surface vehicle)

Status

Pilot: Navy/TF59 + Port of Gulfport deployments; no sustained-scale evidence (cap-flag).

Industry

Maritime robotics

Markets

Defense and commercial

Business model

Vessel-sale model

Power

Wind and solar energy

Investors

Lockheed Martin Ventures, Teledyne Marine, James Fisher and Sons, Energy Innovation Capital

Data & sources

Press releases

1

Web sources

2

3 sources backing this record.View all →

Models (1)

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Current platform

Triton

Ocean Aero (founded 2012 in Gulfport, Mississippi by US Navy veterans, led by CEO Kevin Decker) makes the Triton, the only surface-and-subsea hybrid vehicle in the cohort and its genuine differentiator: a dual-mode autonomous underwater and surface vehicle that sails on wind and solar power for more than 30 days at up to about five knots on the surface and submerges for more than ten days to 100 meters at about two knots, at roughly 15 feet and 1,500 pounds with a minimal radar cross-section and payloads including cameras, side-scan sonar, and mine-neutralization gear in development. It is primarily a vessel maker that also runs some operations with its own personnel, on about $60.2 million raised including from James Fisher and Sons. The registry records it at pilot maturity with an explicit scale gap: it is a real fielded vehicle with named deployments, including continuous autonomous subsea surveillance at the Port of Gulfport since May 2025, a US Navy Task Force 59 evaluation since 2023, and Black Sea operations, but it has no sustained-scale evidence, with no cumulative nautical-mile or sea-day figures, and its stated manufacturing capacity of 360 to over 1,000 Tritons per year is capacity rather than units built, so it is held at pilot and flagged so it is not presented at parity with Saildrone. Its autonomy is genuine, since multi-day unattended submerged and surface transits are not remote-pilotable, but its scale is the open question, and any cumulative total, the world-first subsea-surveillance superlative, the production-capacity figures as actual output, NOAA contract specifics, current ownership, and operational mine neutralization are not verified.

maritime_surfaceView model →

Ocean Aero on the deployment map

Where Ocean Aero's robots are verified operating. Explore the deployment map by place and type.

Explainers

Plain-language answers to the questions people ask about Ocean Aero, from DEPLOY’s explainer library. Each is written in the language of the question and cross-checked against this registry.

  • What is a maritime robot?

    A maritime robot is an autonomous uncrewed vehicle (USV surface + AUV/UUV subsea) operating in the maritime regulatory regime for ocean data collection + commercial + defense operations. Per DEPLOY's framework, the cohort enumerates as: surface×commercial (Saildrone fleet) + surface×defense (Saronic Corsair/Mirage/Marauder) + subsea×defense triad (Anduril Dive-LD + Anduril Ghost Shark + HII REMUS) + subsea×commercial (Bedrock Ocean) + autonomy-system (Sea Machines) + hybrid surface+subsea (Ocean Aero Triton) + legacy-prime entity-scoped (Kongsberg HUGIN AUV + Exail DriX USV). Editorial throughlines: regime matrix (surface×commercial vs surface×defense vs subsea×commercial vs subsea×defense vs autonomy-system vs hybrid); new-defense maritime extension (Saronic + Anduril extend Anduril+Helsing+Shield-AI new-defense from aerial into water, contrasting HII REMUS legacy prime); entity-scoping discipline (registry entity scoped to AI-primary vehicle not parent corp); captive-data-as-a-service vs hardware-sale vs autonomy-system-vendor business-model split.

Safety record

No incidents on record for Ocean Aero.

Only active incidents are counted. Retracted incidents are excluded from this summary but remain reachable at their canonical URLs.

Full safety record: incidents, sourcing, and exposure data →

Recent coverage

Ocean Aero in third-party press

Ocean Aero Triton

Jun 15, 2026

James Fisher Invests In Ocean Aero

Jan 20, 2026

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