Maritime activities are dispersed and cover vast areas, making it difficult for governments, shipping companies, and insurance institutions to promptly monitor sea conditions. According to TechCrunch, U.S. startup Quartermaster is aiming to address this issue with a system of onboard sensors and an analytics platform, and has completed a $43 million Series A funding round.
SmartMast is deployed at the mast position.
Quartermaster is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. The company’s SmartMast is a weatherproof device mounted on a ship’s mast, integrating cameras, radios, and other sensors to transmit real-time maritime data for analysis by a backend platform.
The company describes this system as a distributed continuous sensing network, designed to create more comprehensive maritime information coverage across a large number of vessels. Its applications include identifying nearby vessels, collecting training data for maritime autonomous navigation companies, providing data to research and robotics teams, and delivering maritime information to government agencies.
Target the weaknesses of the AIS system
Neil Sobin, founder and CEO of Quartermaster, said that the current industry-standard AIS, or Automatic Identification System, primarily relies on position signal reporting, offering only basic functionality and being easily turned off or falsified.
He stated that such flaws can impair maritime monitoring effectiveness and may be exploited for smuggling or sanctions evasion. The company aims to reduce issues caused by the deception of a single identification system through richer sensor data and enhanced analytical capabilities.
More than 600 ships have been covered.
Quartermaster stated that more than 600 vessels currently use SmartMast, covering approximately 10 million square miles of ocean. The company also noted that vessels equipped with this system have assisted in over 20 maritime rescues.
This type of rescue is not a direct revenue source, but Sobin believes that improving the crew’s experience helps expand network coverage and strengthens shipowners’ willingness to collaborate with the platform. Rather than selling individual sensors directly to shipowners or fleets, the company aims to build a long-term advantage through network effects.
The funds will be used to expand the engineering team.
This round of funding was co-led by First Round Capital and Quiet Capital. Quartermaster stated that the new capital will primarily be used to hire more engineers and continue advancing product development.
Bill Trenchard, Partner at First Round, said that ocean intelligence has long been constrained by the high cost of custom hardware and difficulties in scaling, and that Quartermaster aims to address this issue with a more scalable approach. For the company, the next focus will be expanding deployment and turning real-time maritime data into more reliable commercial services.