In the aftermath of the passage of President Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill—which set aside billions of dollars for the rapid prototyping and integration of artificial intelligence systems for the Defense Department—startups are in a mad dash to raise capital so they can compete for the funding.
One of those companies is HavocAI, a Rhode Island–based startup that demonstrated its autonomous vessels just last summer and is already selling boats to the U.S. military and its allies. HavocAI closed an $85 million venture funding round at the end of September so that it can be prepared to manufacture thousands of autonomous boats and incorporate its autonomous tech stack into new types of vessels at a moment’s notice, its cofounder and CEO, Paul Lwin, tells Fortune.
“When the reconciliation bill came out, all of our existing investors said: ‘Hey, don’t go and try to raise money and take six months doing it.’ They said: ‘You need to run fast,’” Lwin notes.
HavocAI put together the new round within three months, Lwin said—bolstering the startup’s total funding raised to nearly $100 million since the company launched just last January. This most recent round—which included venture capital firms B Capital, Up.Partners, Scout Ventures, and Outlander Ventures; the CIA’s venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel; defense behemoth and strategic partner Lockheed Martin; and Taiwan’s public and private venture capital fund, Taiwania Capital—will position the startup to compete for a piece of the more than $3.3 billion that the new legislation set aside specifically for the development of medium and small unmanned surface vessels. Lwin declined to provide a valuation.
