Saronic

Saronic Technologies is an emerging maritime defense powerhouse widely considered the "Anduril of the sea." Founded in 2022 by former Navy SEAL Dino Mavrookas and technology veterans, and headquartered in Austin, Texas, its core business centers on modernizing naval warfare through a fleet of "software-defined" Autonomous Surface Vessels (ASVs)—unified by a proprietary AI autonomy stack and the Echelon mission platform. Saronic’s rapid ascent is marked by a dramatic revenue leap from approximately $12.5 million in 2024 to approximately $200 million in 2025, fueled by the Pentagon’s urgent shift toward a "hybrid fleet" of manned and unmanned systems.

A central engine of its 2026 growth is the aggressive expansion of its physical industrial base, moving beyond R&D into mass production. In late 2025, the company invested $300 million to expand its shipyard in Franklin, Louisiana, to support high-rate manufacturing. This momentum was solidified in February 2026 when the U.S. Navy awarded Saronic a $392 million production contract for its Corsair ASV—a 24-foot autonomous craft designed for "affordable mass" strike and electronic warfare missions. Parallel to this, Saronic is finalizing negotiations for Port Alpha, a planned $3.2 billion "Shipyard of the Future" in Brownsville, Texas. Spanning over 4,000 acres near SpaceX’s Starbase, the facility is designed to automate shipbuilding at the scale of consumer electronics, with an ultimate goal of creating 10,000 jobs in South Texas.

Financially, Saronic is one of the fastest-scaling private firms in the defense sector. As of February 2026, the company is finalizing a massive $1.5 billion funding round at a $7.5 billion pre-money valuation, led by Kleiner Perkins. This follows a $600 million Series C in early 2025 that valued the company at $4 billion, effectively nearly doubling its worth in a year. The company has raised nearly $2.5 billion in total capital from elite investors including Andreessen Horowitz, 8VC, General Catalyst, and Elad Gil. This premium valuation reflects an "investor's multiple" typically reserved for software firms, justified by Saronic’s ability to vertically integrate advanced autonomy with the industrial capacity to build ships "by the hundreds" rather than the decades.

The company continues to widen its strategic moat by developing a diverse vessel family, ranging from the 6-foot Spyglass—a "sacrificial" picket sensor—to the 180-foot Marauder class, which is currently undergoing sea trials as a long-range logistics and payload delivery platform. Supported by the Navy's "Replicator" initiative and heightening international interest from allies like Australia and the UK, Saronic’s total order backlog is now estimated to exceed $1 billion. This massive pipeline underscores Saronic’s role as the poster child for "American Industrialism 2.0": combining high-speed software iteration with massive, automated domestic manufacturing to maintain global naval superiority.

This allocation is part of the $1.5B round at a $7.5B pre-money valuation. We're co-managing an SPV with Duende Capital Partners with a 10% one-time access/management fee and 15% carry.