Ubotica raises USD $11 million for maritime AI platform

Ubotica has raised USD $11 million to expand its Live Maritime Intelligence platform in a funding round led by ACT Venture Capital and Greencode Ventures.

Existing investor Atlantic Bridge also participated. The money will support the commercial rollout of a service designed to help governments and maritime agencies monitor threats at sea from space.

The Irish company develops what it calls Orbital AI, software that lets satellites process data in orbit instead of sending all imagery and sensor information back to Earth first. Its Live Maritime Intelligence platform uses that approach for maritime surveillance, identifying areas of elevated risk and directing sensing assets toward them.

According to Ubotica, the service is intended to protect undersea communications cables, offshore energy assets, pipelines, and shipping routes. It comes as governments grow more concerned about dark vessels, shadow fleets, sanctions evasion, and possible sabotage around critical maritime infrastructure.

Space focus

Demand for the platform has increased over the past year as states seek ways to monitor exclusive economic zones that can extend far beyond their land territory. Ubotica argues that processing information in orbit can shorten response times and make satellite networks more selective in what they send back to operators on the ground.

Instead of relying on fixed collection schedules, the platform uses autonomous tasking between ground systems and satellites to shift attention toward emerging activity. Ubotica says this lets operators receive intelligence in minutes rather than waiting for imagery to be reviewed after transmission to Earth.

Ubotica has worked with NASA's Jet Propulsion Labouratory and the European Space Agency on space missions involving onboard AI. It says its technology has run hundreds of thousands of AI inferences in orbit, deployed more than 30 Earth observation models on satellites across multiple missions, and recorded a 100% mission success rate.

The company also says it delivered the first spacecraft able to identify a target ahead and then reorient itself to capture it. Those projects have helped position the group among a small number of companies seeking to move AI processing into space-based operations.

Investor backing

The fundraising reflects investor interest in in-orbit computing as governments and industry treat space systems as a more important part of national infrastructure. Maritime monitoring has become a prominent use case because of the scale of ocean territories and the difficulty of maintaining persistent surveillance with conventional methods alone.

Chief Executive Officer Fintan Buckley outlined the company's commercial push following the raise.

"Ubotica has spent years pioneering Orbital AI, and we have applied that knowledge to one of the hardest security challenges on Earth: protecting vast maritime zones and critical offshore infrastructure," Buckley said.

"Live Maritime Intelligence predicts where risk is emerging, tasks the right satellites and sensors, and delivers decision-grade intelligence in minutes, giving security teams the speed and efficiency they need to act. This investment allows us to bring LMI to market at scale."

Andrew O'Neill of ACT Venture Capital linked the investment to a broader shift in how satellite data is used.

"Ubotica has been running inference in orbit for years and transforms static Earth observation into live intelligence. Nations can't afford to wait hours for imagery while a vessel goes dark over critical infrastructure. Live Maritime Intelligence proves what onboard intelligence is worth: it turns Earth observation from a camera into a real-time sentinel, starting with Europe's waters," O'Neill said.

Greencode Ventures also pointed to the political and commercial importance of protecting infrastructure in Europe's coastal and offshore zones. The investor said early detection of threats and anomalies across large ocean areas could support both security needs and market demand for more responsive surveillance systems.

"Resilience is a key topic for Europe in the coming years. Securing critical infrastructure in harbors and offshore is crucial. Ubotica's edge AI technology enables satellite constellations to detect threats and anomalies early, anywhere across vast ocean areas, creating both a strategic security capability and a compelling commercial opportunity," said Terhi Vapola of Greencode Ventures.