AI for Maritime Intelligence: Announcing AndrenaM's $10M Seed Round
Building the world's first distributed sensor network enabling low cost, persistent maritime awareness
Today we’re excited to announce AndrenaM’s oversubscribed $10M seed, led by Meka Asonye at First Round Capital with participation from Long Journey, Homebrew, and existing investors Banter, Wave Function, and 201.vc. You can read more in the Business Insider exclusive here and in the team’s own words here.
We first met Matej and Alex in September 2023. They cold emailed us while still employed in their prior roles with the vision to build a low cost, persistent monitoring and maritime data collection platform. In the last 18 months, that vision hasn’t changed, but through hard work and execution it’s become infinitely more tangible.
Over the next several months, we became fast friends. Also Capital made an initial investment last summer and supported Matej and Alex in accelerating their vision…and we had a lot of fun along the way! We attended demos on Navy bases, learned about subsea acoustic process technology, and over time helped bring some of our friends around the table to be part of the journey (s/o to Heston, Eric, Jamie, Zak, Daniela and more!).
If you’ve met Matej and Alex, you know they’re magnetic personalities. Their authenticity and clarity of thought around what’s needed to enable true persistent maritime awareness and autonomy is inspiring. It’s everything we look for in a founding team. Those soft skills and unmatched work ethic are what’s helped them build a stellar team of eight from some of the best venture-backed Hard Tech companies, with the customer momentum to match.
We’re also excited to welcome Meka and our friends at First Round to the team and double down alongside them. Meka and the FRC team have a nose for great talent and have quietly built a great track record backing Hard Tech companies early, including our shared investment in K2 Space where we’ve worked closely, and prior investments in companies like Planet Labs ($1.6B, publicly traded).
If you’re looking for the next rocket ship to join, with the opportunity to spent time out on the water and call it “work”, they’re hiring! See more on their open roles here.