Spear AI Raises Seed Round to Supercharge Maritime Intelligence Platform
Spear AI, a startup specializing in maritime artificial intelligence, has closed its seed funding round with backing from Scare the Bear Capital and Cortical Ventures—two firms known for betting on deep-tech ventures with defense and dual-use potential.
The investment will fuel Spear AI’s expansion of Horizon, its flagship AI platform for managing and labeling acoustic data, and strengthen its development of modular maritime sensors and AI engineering services tailored for edge environments.
For a company born at the intersection of AI and national security, the timing couldn’t be better.
“This investment is a validation of our vision to transform maritime data into actionable intelligence,” said Michael Hunter, co-founder and CEO of Spear AI. “Scare the Bear Capital and Cortical Ventures understand the urgency of delivering operationally relevant AI at the edge.”
A Smarter Way to Listen to the Ocean
Horizon, Spear AI’s crown jewel, is a modular platform designed to ingest, label, and operationalize acoustic and sensor data—one of the most difficult, underutilized data streams in the maritime world. It’s engineered to enable fast, on-the-fly AI deployments in environments where bandwidth is limited and latency is not an option.
Think of it as a mission-ready MLOps suite, but for submarines, sonar arrays, and other high-stakes naval systems.
The company doesn’t stop at software. Spear AI also offers a tight integration of sensors, machine learning engineers, data architects, and subject matter experts, bridging the often wide gap between AI development and real-world deployment—especially in national security applications.
That includes reinforcement learning systems, decision support tools, and custom AI pipelines optimized for use at sea—where connectivity is spotty, environmental variables change constantly, and lives may depend on real-time decisions.
Backers Betting on Defense-Focused AI Done Right
The investors in this round are no strangers to the defense and enterprise AI space.
“With Spear, we found exceptional leadership and real opportunity within the Federal Government,” said Matt Dean, managing partner at Scare the Bear Capital.
Jeremy Achin, cofounder of Cortical Ventures and former CEO of DataRobot, emphasized founder-market fit:
“I believe the best companies to invest in operate at the intersection of opportunities to (a) save the world and (b) generate significant returns, and Spear is a clear example of that.”
Eyes on Global Waters
Already working closely with the U.S. Navy and Department of Defense, Spear AI has its sights set on commercial and international growth. The funding will be used to scale engineering teams, expand sensor hardware capabilities, and support partners in building data pipelines and edge-deployable AI across both government and commercial maritime domains.
The maritime AI space is heating up, especially as national security priorities shift toward autonomous systems, contested waters, and data-driven situational awareness. While competitors are still adapting generic AI platforms to fit maritime needs, Spear AI is building for the domain from the ground up.
This isn’t AI for click-through rates. It’s AI for sonar, surveillance, and survival.
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