Australian ocean robotics company Hullbot has raised USD $10.6 million (AUD $16 million) in an oversubscribed Series A round led by Regeneration.VC, with participation from Katapult Ocean, Climate Tech Partners, Folklore, and Trinity Ventures.
Hullbot designs and operates advanced robots that proactively clean and inspect ship hulls. Even brief biofouling increases fuel consumption, driving costs and emissions upwards. Shipping contributes nearly 1 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions annually, with biofouling a significant factor. Hullbot’s technology has surpassed 1,000 paid hull cleans on 82 vessels across the US, EU, and APAC regions, delivering consistent fuel and emissions savings. Under the hood sits a protected portfolio of proprietary hardware integrated with cutting-edge machine vision tooling that learns from each clean.
“I’m blown away by this team of mariners, roboticists, and software engineers,” shared Regeneration.VC Principal Destana Herring. “This is ingenious technology ripe with commercial proof at a critical inflection point for international maritime. We see a validated multibillion-dollar opportunity to decarbonize world-leading fleets.”
“We’re proud to have built this technology here in Australia, designed, manufactured, and is already servicing a global market,” said Tom Loefler, Hullbot CEO and co-founder. “Our mission is simple but urgent: to help shipping companies cut costs, emissions, and ocean impacts all at once. We’ve proven it can be done, and now we’re scaling it to a global level.”
The proceeds of this financing grow production capacity to service surging demand, evolve larger robotic systems better-suited to larger vessel classes, and establish more international service hubs. Currently, Hullbot has established operations in the US, Mexico, Europe, Singapore and local markets.
Hullbot’s success has not gone unnoticed. They were recently awarded the Australian Good Design Award of the Year, the nation’s highest design honour, beating global giants such as Tesla, Hyundai, and Polestar. In addition to the top award, Hullbot secured Gold and Best in Class Awards for Commercial & Industrial Product Design, underscoring its industry-leading innovation, scalability, and environmental impact.
“The future of our ocean and economies depends on ventures that blend ethics, technology and creativity. Hullbot has demonstrated how to combine all three brilliantly, while also being great humans to work with. Their growth journey already has, and will even more, show the way for many others to follow,” shared founder and director For Blue Andrew Outhwaite.
For more information visit www.hullbot.com
