Online Oceans raises GBP £4 million in Seraphim deal

KAREN JOY BACUDO

Finance Editor

Online Oceans has raised £4 million to expand its autonomous surface vessel business in a funding round led by Seraphim Space.

The investment will support manufacturing, deployments and rising customer demand across defence and commercial markets. Other investors included Peter Rive, Co-Founder of SolarCity, Quantum Systems founders Frank Thieser and Florian Seibel, and Koro Capital.

Online Oceans builds autonomous surface vessels and fleet software for maritime surveillance and security. Its products are designed for governments and commercial operators seeking longer-duration monitoring of coastal waters, ports, borders, strategic chokepoints and subsea infrastructure.

The company was founded in 2025 by George Morton and Alistair Douglas. Morton leads the business, while Douglas oversees command-and-control software and fleet systems.

Fleet system

At the centre of its system is Scout, a compact solar-powered autonomous surface vessel. It is paired with Tether, a cloud-based command platform that allows operators to manage missions, monitor assets and review data in real time.

Online Oceans has designed the system for dense fleet deployment rather than occasional missions by individual vessels. It argues that existing maritime coverage often depends either on crewed ships with high operating costs or on autonomous systems that are too expensive to deploy at scale.

The funding comes amid growing concern over maritime security, including the protection of subsea cables, offshore energy assets, ports and coastal borders. Pressure on defence budgets has also increased interest in lower-cost systems that can stay at sea for longer.

Online Oceans says it is already working with initial customers in defence, maritime domain awareness and ocean data. It has also begun data sales, and its first months of production were sold out ahead of commercial deliveries.

Security use

The company is also in discussions about using its autonomous surface fleets for coastal and offshore security missions in the Gulf. Those talks include early warning of incoming aerial threats through acoustic and optical sensing, passive acoustic monitoring of the subsea environment to detect submarines and uncrewed underwater vehicles, and surface intelligence and surveillance tasks such as AIS spoofing detection and visual monitoring.

Online Oceans is part of a broader push in Europe to build defence and security technology closer to home as governments reassess vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure. Maritime surveillance has become a particular concern as attacks on subsea infrastructure and wider geopolitical tensions expose gaps in continuous monitoring.

Its approach is based on deploying larger numbers of lower-cost vessels connected to a central software platform. That differs from patrol models built around a smaller number of expensive assets, which can leave stretches of water monitored only intermittently.

Investor view

Seraphim Space is known for backing companies in the space and deep technology sectors. Its involvement adds to a group of investors with backgrounds in clean technology, aerospace and autonomous systems.

Online Oceans says it moved from first builds to a production ramp in little more than a year. That pace, along with early customer agreements, appears to have helped attract investors seeking defence technology with clearer paths to deployment.

Britain and other European countries have placed greater emphasis on maritime resilience as they assess the security of undersea energy and communications links. The issue has expanded beyond conventional naval defence to include surveillance of commercial infrastructure and the detection of covert activity near cables, pipelines and offshore sites.

For border agencies and coastguards, persistent monitoring is also tied to migration control, smuggling and illegal fishing. Autonomous fleets are appealing partly because they can extend surveillance without the crewing costs and maintenance burden of conventional patrol vessels.

George Morton, Co-Founder of Online Oceans, said: “Persistent maritime coverage has been too expensive for too long. That has limited what governments and operators can actually see, protect and respond to at sea. We built Online Oceans to change that. This funding allows us to scale production and support customers who need a far more practical way to monitor critical waters, protect infrastructure and maintain awareness over long periods.”

Haverty, Seraphim Space, said: “Online Oceans is building a category-defining company at the intersection of defence, maritime autonomy and data. The breakthrough here is not just a lower-cost vessel. It is a new coverage model: dense, persistent fleets that can monitor critical waters continuously rather than sporadically. What impressed us was not just the technical insight, but the speed of execution. In little over a year, the team has moved from founding to production ramp, early customer traction and first data sales. We believe they have the potential to build a global leader in this category.”