Who's who in building a new robot navy for the U.S.? Over the years, I've highlighted a handful of usual suspects, from Leidos (LDOS 0.33%) -- builder of the first autonomous Sea Hunter robotic trimaran -- to L3Harris (LHX 0.67%), chosen to build the next generation of autonomous warships, to more traditional military shipbuilders such as General Dynamics (GD 1.35%) and Huntington Ingalls (HII 0.66%), which have also tried to horn in on the robotic warship game.
All of the companies named so far are publicly traded defense stocks. For the time being, buying them is the best and easiest way for you to invest in robotic warships as a concept -- but is there an even purer-play way to do this?
Maybe. Eventually.
Image source: Saronic.
Get to know Saronic
I want to introduce you to Saronic, a privately owned defense company founded by former Navy SEAL and DEVGRU operator Dino Mavrookas, that specializes almost exclusively in robotic warships. We haven't talked a lot about Saronic before, but the name is appearing more and more often in the defense press lately.
Saronic builds warships -- uncrewed, autonomous, long-endurance robotic vessels ranging from 24-foot Corsair speedboats to 40-foot Mirage vessels to the 180-foot Marauder, which can carry as many as four 40-foot trailer-sized rocket launching systems boasting a total of 16 cruise missiles. The company aims to use its new funding to accelerate and scale production, build more and bigger warships, and "reshape the entire shipbuilding industry" in the process.
It's already winning Navy contracts, including a December award to deliver an undisclosed number of Corsairs for $392 million. The company immediately announced it will pour almost the entirety of this award into expanding production capacity at its Franklin, Louisiana, shipyard, investing $300 million.
Last month, Saronic broke into the big time with news that the defense company has raised $1.75 billion in private financing from big-name venture capital firms such as Advent International, Andreessen Horowitz, and Franklin Templeton. As reported on defense news website Tectonic, this latest round of financing values privately held Saronic at $9.25 billion.
Much of the investment will go into the company's biggest boats. Two Marauders are already under construction, for example, and Saronic intends to scale production to 20 such big vessels annually by next year. To support the upgrade, the company is building an entirely new shipyard, called Port Alpha, to supplement its existing Louisiana yard. Louisiana is already capable of building 1,000 Corsairs annually and is upgrading to produce 2,000.
What's next for investors
Saronic has floated no plans yet for an IPO -- but there are rumors. The company's shares may be available for private trading on certain markets for such investments, such as Forge Global or the Nasdaq Private Market.
At $9 billion in market cap and counting, there's clearly a demand for the shares. And in the current market, an IPO may not be too far away.
