Autonomous shipping is moving from a future-facing idea into a commercial technology race. Orca AI, a London-based startup focused on AI navigation at sea, has added $23 million in fresh funding as ship operators look for ways to cut fuel use, reduce risk and manage increasingly complex voyages.
The round was led by OCV Partners and MizMaa Ventures. TechCrunch was told the funding sits between a Series A and Series B, and it takes Orca AI's total raised to nearly $40 million.
A growing market for ships that navigate with AI
The autonomous navigation market is not limited to cars. At sea, the same broad idea is being applied to ships: use AI to support navigation decisions, keep vessels on course and help crews manage the journey more efficiently.
The market is projected to grow from $4.46 billion in 2023 to $5.33 billion in 2024 alone. That growth gives context to Orca AI's new round, because shipping operators are under pressure to improve safety, reduce emissions and use digital tools more effectively.
Orca AI was founded at the end of 2018 and launched its AI navigation technology commercially in 2021. That same year, it raised a $13 million Series A.
The company says it has powered the world's first autonomous commercial ship voyage in congested waters. Its latest funding will be used for scaling and expansion, for building new products based on data the platform is ingesting from clients, and for expanding its engineering team.
What Orca AI says its platform does
Orca AI was founded by Israeli naval technology experts Yarden Gross and Dor Raviv. Gross is the company's CEO and co-founder.
The platform processes multiple sources of visual information during navigation at sea. The goal is to keep the ship on course while reducing the navigation burden on crew members, leaving them more room to monitor other risks during a voyage.
Those risks include drone attacks and piracy, which the source article describes as occurring in increasingly unstable geopolitical times. For shipping companies, that matters because a voyage is not only a route-planning problem. It is also a safety, staffing and operational problem.
Gross described the long-term direction of the industry in direct terms: "When you talk about oceangoing vessels, we're going to see, in the near future, vessels sailing without any crew. In the meantime, you can optimize and automate many parts of the voyage, reducing workload, reducing also the amount of people. You can optimize fuel consumption emissions [and] the ETA [estimated time of arrival] and increase safety altogether. So this is what we're building. We're building a platform that serves the ship itself."
That framing places Orca AI between today's crewed shipping operations and a future in which some vessels may sail without crews. In the near term, the company's pitch is less about removing humans entirely and more about automating parts of the voyage.
The claims: fewer encounters, lower fuel use and emissions cuts
Orca AI points to results from a 2023 trial to support its safety claims. The company says its system reduced "close encounters in open waters" by 33% and "crossing events" by 40% across 15 million nautical miles.
For context, the source article notes that there were over 2,500 significant marine incidents in 2022, according to a European Maritime Safety Agency report. That comparison helps explain why collision prevention and navigation support are attractive areas for maritime technology companies.
The company also claims financial and environmental benefits. Orca AI says its system can deliver $100,000 to $300,000 in fuel savings per vessel per year, reducing fuel consumption by 3% to 5%.
It also says the technology achieved a CO2 reduction of 72,716 tons across 1,000 vessels last year.
Those claims connect directly to the broader pressure facing shipping. The industry is being pushed to reduce its carbon footprint, creating room for startups that can digitize operations and use AI to improve efficiency.
Why fleet operations matter
Orca AI is not presenting its technology only as an onboard navigation assistant. Gross said the platform uploads all data to the cloud, giving fleet managers monitoring tools and broader operational capabilities.
He described the idea this way: "It means they can operate not one vessel, but the entire fleet. So you can think about it as an operational platform for a semi-autonomous fleet."
That fleet-level view is important because shipping companies do not manage isolated journeys in a vacuum. They manage vessels, schedules, fuel consumption, risk and estimated arrival times across operations. A platform that can support the ship and also inform fleet managers could become more useful as automation expands.
Orca AI works with global shipping companies including MSC, NYK, Maersk and Seaspan. Other companies working on autonomous navigation at sea include Avikus, a subsidiary of Hyundai HD, and Sea Machines.
Investors see a category still being defined
OCV managing partner Hemi Zucker framed the investment around the size and importance of maritime transport. In a supporting statement, he said: "Maritime transport is the lifeblood of international trade and the global economy. Over 80% of the volume of international trade in goods is carried by sea, a $2 trillion market by some estimates. While planes, trains, and automobiles have seen tremendous progress and investment in regards to autopilot and collision prevention, we believe that the shipping industry is still up for grabs and there is a category defining opportunity in autonomous ships — ships that captain themselves."
That is the investment case in compact form: shipping is central to trade, but autonomous navigation at sea remains an open field. Orca AI's $23 million round shows that investors believe the category is still early enough for a major platform company to emerge.
The practical question now is execution. Orca AI plans to scale, expand, hire more engineers and build new products from customer data. If its claims hold up across more vessels and routes, autonomous shipping may become less of a distant concept and more of a standard operating layer for modern fleets.