Saronic Technologies

Autonomous surface vessels · Austin headquarters · Port Alpha, Brownsville

An Austin company building the Navy's autonomous fleet and a new shipyard at Brownsville. Port Alpha alone would more than double US commercial shipbuilding capacity.

  • Saronic vessels
  • Port Alpha hull capacity
Saronic vessels and Port Alpha build capacity drawn to one scale: Corsair 24 ft, Mirage 40 ft and Marauder 180 ft, against Port Alpha hulls up to 850 ft at opening and over 1,200 ft after expansion DRAWN TO ONE SCALE, IN FEET 24 ft autonomous surface vessel; 1,000+ nm range, 35+ knots; under a $392M Navy production contractCORSAIR24 FT 40 ft multi-mission vessel; 35+ knots; modular, dual-useMIRAGE40 FT 180 ft medium unmanned surface vessel; 5,400 nm range, 150 t payload; building at Gulf Craft, Franklin, LouisianaMARAUDER180 FT Initial build positions for vessels up to 850 ftPORT ALPHA, OPENING850 FT Future expansion for vessels over 1,200 ftPORT ALPHA, EXPANSION1,200 FT 0 300 600 900 1,200 CORSAIR IS THE SLIVER AT TOP LEFT
Valuation
$9.25B
Raised
$2.58B
Employees
~1,100
Port Alpha
$3B+, 835 acres
Capacity at opening
150,000 GT/yr
Sector
Aerospace and defense

Overview

Rebuilding American Shipbuilding From Austin

Saronic Technologies designs, builds and deploys autonomous surface vessels for the US Navy and allied fleets. Founded in Austin in 2022 by former Navy SEAL Dino Mavrookas (CEO), Vibhav Altekar (CTO, from Anduril), Doug Lambert (COO) and Rob Lehman (CCO), it has about 1,100 employees, has raised $2.58B in five rounds and was valued at $9.25B.

It matters beyond one company because the US has lost the capacity to build ships at scale while China has become the world's dominant shipbuilder; the Office of Naval Intelligence has put China's shipbuilding capacity at more than 200 times America's. Port Alpha, Saronic's shipyard at Brownsville, would more than double current US commercial shipbuilding capacity at opening, and Saronic counts a national shortfall of about 250,000 skilled shipbuilders over the decade. That makes a venture-backed Austin company one of the country's few new answers to the naval build gap.

150,000 gross tons a year, more than double current US commercial shipbuilding capacityPort Alpha at opening150,000 GT Scalable past 2 million gross tons a yearPort Alpha at scale2,000,000 GT

The vessels

Corsair, Mirage and Marauder

Saronic vessel family, August 2026
VesselLengthPerformanceMission
Corsair24 ft1,000+ nm range, 35+ knots, 1,000 lb payload, 50+ days autonomous loiterSurveillance, targeting, electronic warfare, loitering munitions; $392M Navy production contract (December 2025)
Mirage40 ft35+ knots, modular open architectureMulti-mission military and commercial work, logistics, harbor operations
Marauder180 ft5,400 nm range, 25+ knots, 150 t payloadMedium unmanned surface vessel for cargo and expeditionary logistics; building at Gulf Craft, Franklin, Louisiana

All three share one autonomy stack and Echelon, Saronic's command-and-control software for single vessels or fleets, and carry Nvidia edge computers to navigate and track targets without GPS or communications. Corsair went from prototype to high-rate production in under a year; the fleet logged more than 79,000 nm and 15,000 hours in 2025. Saronic bought Louisiana shipbuilder Gulf Craft to build Marauder, and DARPA picked it for the Pulling Guard escort program.

Port Alpha

A Shipyard at Brownsville

Port Alpha
ItemDetail
CapitalMore than $3B (state figure $3.2B)
Site835 acres at the Port of Brownsville, expandable to nearly 4,400
Production space1.2M sq ft enclosed in a 2.5M sq ft production area; 8 to 10 buildings; 2 to 4 build positions
Quay and steelMore than 2,500 ft of deepwater quay; 75,000 t of steel processing a year
Capacity150,000 gross tons a year at opening, scalable past 2 million
HullsUp to 850 ft at opening; over 1,200 ft after expansion
First shipsLanding Craft Utility vessels for the US Navy
JobsUp to 10,000 direct over a decade
IncentivesCameron County: 95% tax abatement over 20 years, worth about $211M
BuilderJE Dunn and Alberici joint venture
Operations2028 target

Saronic picked Brownsville on July 16, 2026 after a year-long search of East, West and Gulf Coast sites, and broke ground on October 1 with Vice President JD Vance and Governor Abbott. The Port of Brownsville is the only deepwater port on the US-Mexico border and the largest land-owning public port authority in the country, about 40,000 acres. Saronic and Samsung Heavy Industries announced a shipbuilding partnership on July 23.

Port Alpha shares the ship channel with SpaceX's new 444-acre site and sits a few miles from Starbase, the same Austin-design, South-Texas-build pattern as Giga Texas and Starbase. State officials put its Texas economic impact at $264.5B.

In service

The Hormuz Rescue

On June 8, 2026 a US Army AH-64 Apache went down near the Strait of Hormuz off Oman; US officials told CNN it was hit by an Iranian Shahed drone. About two hours later a Corsair operated by the Navy's Task Force 59 picked up the crew and carried them to a helicopter pickup, an apparent first for a drone boat rescuing a downed aircrew.

In connected mode the vessels use the same orbital network Golden Dome is building, Starshield, the Space Development Agency's tracking layer and Starlink, and Palantir and Anduril software in Austin ties that picture to systems at sea and on land. See the Golden Dome Texas Corridor and Fort Hood, where Austin's land systems are tested.

Timeline

Founding to Groundbreaking in Four Years

  1. 2022Founded in Austin by Dino Mavrookas, Vibhav Altekar, Doug Lambert and Rob Lehman; first vessel delivered within six months
  2. December 2025$392M US Navy production contract for Corsair
  3. June 8, 2026A Navy Task Force 59 Corsair rescues the crew of a US Army Apache downed near the Strait of Hormuz
  4. July 16, 2026Brownsville chosen for Port Alpha after a year-long national search
  5. July 23, 2026Shipbuilding partnership with Samsung Heavy Industries
  6. October 1, 2026Port Alpha groundbreaking with Vice President JD Vance and Governor Greg Abbott
  7. 2028Port Alpha operations target

Andreessen Horowitz, 8VC, Caffeinated Capital and Elad Gil are repeat investors; the Series D added Advent, Bessemer, DFJ Growth, Franklin Templeton and others. Saronic is a Capital Factory Texas Fund I company from the Center for Dual-Use Innovation ecosystem in downtown Austin.

Record

Dataset Record

Sources
Saronic and Governor's office announcements; Defense One and Defense News; Cameron County; groundbreaking coverage, October 2026
Vessel figures
Saronic product pages, August 2026
Last verified
Q4 2026