07-01-2026SUBSCRIBER EXCLUSIVE

Inside the $9 billion Texas startup building a drone armada for the U.S. Navy

Founded by a former Navy SEAL, Saronic has $2.6 billion in funding, $500 million in government contracts, and a bold vision for how fleets of drone boats will reshape warfare and American industry.

It was September 2022, and Dino Mavrookas was trying to build the future of U.S. naval power atop an $800 dinghy.

A former Navy SEAL turned tech investor, Mavrookas had recently launched the startup Saronic Technologies with a vision for shoring up America’s defenses: cheap, fast autonomous boats that could be commanded in swarms, armed with sensors and weapons, and manufactured at factory scale.

But first, he and his team, veterans of SpaceX and Anduril, needed a prototype. So they bought a raft off Amazon and began rigging it with $30,000 in off-the-shelf cameras, sensors, and motors in their bare-bones Austin warehouse.

A month later, Ukraine used its own makeshift drone boat to strike a multimillion-dollar Russian warship. Soon, lawmakers and naval officials were traveling to Austin to see the prototype. “Everybody was like, ‘Oh, drone boats are massively effective against larger naval vessels,’” Mavrookas says. Just 90 days after launching, Saronic signed its first Navy contract.

Since then, Mavrookas’s vision has become a strategic imperative. For years, the U.S.’s long-term strategy has focused on the South China Sea, where Beijing’s potential plans to take Taiwan involve a flotilla of autonomous carriers and stealth unmanned surface vessels (USVs), aka drone boats. But after the U.S. and Israel launched their attacks on Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran’s cheap aerial drones and kamikaze skiffs have upended U.S. war plans and disrupted the global economy, the demand signal, as they call it, is blaring.

“We’re seeing our thesis play out in real time,” Mav­rookas says. “We need this as a country.” Indeed, in early June, two U.S. airmen went down with their helicopter near the coast of Oman; roughly two hours later, they were rescued by 5th Fleet’s drone-focused Task Force 59—using one of Saronic’s Corsair USVs. It was a Navy first, and possibly a world first. 

Mav­rookas’s sense of urgency defines Saronic’s rise into a defense-tech powerhouse with 1,400 employees, $500 million in government contracts, $2.6 billion in total funding, and a valuation north of $9 billion. The company is using the cash, from investors like Andreessen Horowitz and Joe Lonsdale, to create autonomous boats and larger ships capable of carrying cargo, weapons, or flocks of more drones, along with the software for operating them.

Saronic has several vessels in various stages of production, from the 24-foot Corsair to the 160-foot Marauder. Last year, it bought an ailing shipyard in Louisiana and built its first Marauder in nine months, making it possibly the fastest ship built from scratch in the United States since World War II. Saronic intends to build as many as 20 there next year, depending on demand.

For Mavrookas, drone boat factories are the answer to a geopolitical math problem. Global power is, to a large degree, a function of sea power. China reportedly surpassed the U.S. in total number of naval ships about a decade ago. The country now accounts for 51% of global shipbuilding, while the U.S. turns out only a few dozen naval and commercial ships a year.

Washington still leads in firepower, but in a prolonged conflict, the core issue isn’t just who has the most ships, it’s who can build........

© Fast Company