Saronic Closes $1.75 Billion Round at $9.25 Billion Valuation, Led by Kleiner Perkins

Autonomous warship maker Saronic closed a $1.75 billion round in March, led by Kleiner Perkins, at a $9.25 billion valuation. The company is building Port Alpha, an autonomous shipyard in Brownsville, Texas, where both the warships and the production line itself are being automated.
The round was discussed on Imagination in Action by host John Werner and co-host Alex Wissner-Gross with guest Erik Bethel, a Mari Librum investor who backed Saronic before autonomous warships became a consensus trade. Bethel said that within 10 years, he expects anything that moves to be either autonomous or to keep a human in the loop as backup, describing a future where a container ship sails with counter-drone gear on deck, underwater drones mapping for mines ahead of it, and two or three Saronic boats circling it.