In the aftermath of the passage of President Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill—which set aside billions of dollars for the rapid prototyping and integration of artificial intelligence systems for the Defense Department—startups are in a mad dash to raise capital so they can compete for the funding.
One of those companies is HavocAI, a Rhode Island–based startup that demonstrated its autonomous vessels just last summer and is already selling boats to the U.S. military and its allies. HavocAI closed an $85 million venture funding round at the end of September so that it can be prepared to manufacture thousands of autonomous boats and incorporate its autonomous tech stack into new types of vessels at a moment’s notice, its cofounder and CEO, Paul Lwin, tells Fortune.
