Spear AI, a Washington‑based startup founded by U.S. Navy veterans, has raised US$2.3 million in seed funding from Cortical Ventures and Scare the Bear. The early financing will allow the five‑person company to double its headcount and accelerate the development of sensors and software that apply artificial intelligence to submarine “passive acoustic” data.
The startup’s technology labels and organises huge volumes of underwater sound captured by sonar and hydrophone arrays. By creating high‑quality training data, it enables machine‑learning models to distinguish between natural ocean noise and human‑made signals such as ship engines or torpedoes. The approach could help submarine crews identify threats more quickly and reduce the workload on sonar operators who currently rely on manual listening and analysis.
Spear AI already holds a US$6 million contract with the U.S. Navy to provide sensors for a small submarine programme. With the new funding, it plans to expand its product line and sell to foreign navies, research institutes and energy companies that need to monitor undersea infrastructure. The company also sees opportunities in safeguarding pipelines and communication cables by detecting unusual acoustic signatures that might indicate sabotage or accidents.
The founders say that underwater acoustic data is one of the least explored domains in artificial intelligence. Unlike image or text data, there is no large publicly available dataset of submarine sounds, so Spear AI’s proprietary sensor network and labelling tools could give it an early lead. By bringing modern AI tools to the depths of the ocean, the startup hopes to make submarines and other maritime assets safer and more intelligent.