2025: a year of operational scale

As 2025 comes to an end, it’s a good time to reflect on both what we achieved this year and how we see 2026 panning out. As the maritime industry faces more disruption, uncertainty, and stricter rules on fuel, emissions, and compliance, shipping companies now see the need for quick solutions to boost safety and efficiency across their fleets. 

Throughout the year, we kept our focus clear: help crews and office teams make better decisions with less hassle, and turn those improvements into positive ROI.

Securing additional strategic funding 

In March 2025, we announced the completion of a $72.5 million Series B investment. This was a vote of confidence from the financial market in Orca AI’s future business growth, bringing our total funding raised to $111 million and strengthening our position as the market leader in the automation of vessel operations and an enabler of autonomous shipping. 

Reducing safety events in an increasingly complex environment 

Satellite jamming and GPS spoofing. A growing dark fleet exceeding 3,000 ships. Increasingly congested sea lanes. Poor visibility from heavy weather and nighttime conditions. It seems like maritime navigation in 2025 has never been more complex or vulnerable. AI and digital platforms like Orca AI have become a must-have, at least in geopolitically sensitive regions.

In March, Orca AI thermal cameras captured the fatal collision between the Solong and Stena Immaculate, an event that reignited questions across the industry about how crews are supported on the bridge, how fatigue is managed, and whether today’s operational models are truly fit for purpose.

In 2025, Orca AI helped crews reduce significant safety events by 58% and save over $82,000 in fuel per vessel per year while sailing more than 120 million nautical miles. These numbers reflect safer bridges, fewer close calls, and a more efficient use of fuel.

Onboarding new customers and expanding existing ones 

In 2025, we onboarded many new customers, among them:  

Seaspan rolled out Orca AI’s operation platform to more than 100 ships after seeing the positive effect on the distance between vessels, fuel consumption, and operational risk.

Ionic Shipping, a leading Greek tanker and bulk-carrier company, expanded Orca AI to its entire fleet of 19 vessels as part of its commitment to enhancing safety performance.

Germany’s Harren Group chose Orca AI for its new heavylift and multipurpose vessels, bringing AI-assisted navigation into a segment where complex cargoes, challenging ports, and tight windows are the norm.

More recently, Gram Car Carriers from Norway, the world’s third-largest operator of pure car and truck carriers, deployed Orca AI across its 21 owned vessels to embed standardized AI-enabled situational awareness and create consistent fleetwide visibility across ship and shore.

Strategic partnerships 

In 2025, we continued our collaboration with leading P&I club NorthStandard. As part of the partnership, the club offered members a reduced installation cost, resulting in hundreds of new vessels joining the Orca AI fleet this year. We have also conducted a longer-term study to assess how Orca AI impacts fleet safety performance and whether that could lower premium costs for users in the future. The striking results will be announced in early 2026. 

We also entered a strategic alliance with Anglo-Eastern, one of the world’s largest independent ship managers, to encourage the adoption of Orca AI’s AI-powered situational awareness platform across more than 750 vessels under its management. This is a strong signal that advanced bridge support is becoming a standard expectation at fleet scale.

Proven operations at scale with 1,000 vessels installed

This year, the Orca AI network reached a milestone. Around 1,000 vessels are now installed and sailing with Orca AI, with hundreds more preparing for deployment. Together, these ships have generated a visual dataset of more than 100 million nautical miles of real-world conditions, including crowded straits and port approaches to open ocean storms.

Crowdsourced safety for oceans with Orca AI’s Co-Captain

In November, we launched Co-Captain, connecting Orca-equipped vessels into a live information network that turns real-world observations into route-specific guidance. Crews receive verified alerts about hazards, heavy weather, spoofed signals, fishing clusters, piracy concerns, and regulatory changes, delivered in the context of where they are and where they are headed. When a vessel ahead encounters an unexpected condition, that insight can reach others on the same track quickly enough to inform decisions on watch, support bridge team discussions, and help shore teams maintain a clearer operational picture.

Looking forward to 2026

In 2026, we at Orca AI will keep building the practical foundations of autonomy. We will be expanding beyond the computer vision and deep learning models that have underpinned our technology to include machine-learning capabilities for predictions and voyage optimization. 

In parallel, we will continue integrating agentic and generative AI into the Orca AI platform to improve operations and communications between ship and shore, and to automate many of the manual workflows that still dominate day-to-day maritime operations. As these capabilities mature, agent-based AI will increasingly take on routine tasks, allowing crews and fleet teams to focus on supervision, judgment, and safety-critical decisions.