Orca AI develops AI-powered autonomous navigation and decision-making systems for ships using a marine visual dataset covering over 80 million nautical miles. Its platform aims to reduce collisions and offload routine monitoring, allowing crews to focus on other voyage tasks. A 2024 analysis of Orca AI’s alerts system showed a 54% reduction in close encounter events and an average fuel savings of $100,000 per vessel per year. The company remains active in the commercial sector with collaborations and proofs of concept, while pursuing defense opportunities after signing and deploying its first contract on a navy ship. Expansion of Starlink connectivity is accelerating growth by enabling real-time data transmission and large-scale collection directly from ship sensors for route mapping and traffic monitoring. Orca AI is based in London and was founded in 2018 by CEO Yarden Gross and CTO Dor Raviv. Financially, it has raised over $111 million to date, including a $23 million round last year and the recent Series B. Orca AI builds AI navigation software that processes multiple visual sources to keep ships on course and provides a cloud-based operational platform for fleet managers. Founded at the end of 2018 by Israeli naval technology experts Yarden Gross and Dor Raviv, the company launched its navigation technology commercially in 2021 and says it powered the world’s first autonomous commercial ship voyage in congested waters. The platform uploads data to the cloud, offers monitoring tools for fleets, and is positioned as an operational platform for semi-autonomous fleets, with the company describing a future of increasingly automated or crewless vessels. Orca cites results from a 2023 trial showing a 33% reduction in close encounters and a 40% reduction in crossing events across 15 million nautical miles, plus reported fuel savings of $100,000–$300,000 per vessel per year (3–5% fuel reduction) and a CO2 reduction of 72,716 tons across 1,000 vessels last year. Orca works with global shipping companies including MSC, NYK, Maersk and Seaspan. Future plans highlighted by the company include scaling and expansion, building new products from ingested client data, and expanding its engineering team. Orca AI is a Tel Aviv-based startup that retrofits computer-vision systems onto cargo ships to improve navigation and collision avoidance. Its AI-based navigation and vessel-tracking system uses vision sensors, thermal and low-light cameras plus algorithms to alert crews in difficult or congested waterways. The solution can be fitted to ships already at sea and the company hopes it could introduce autonomous guidance for vessels. Orca AI cites more than 4,000 annual marine incidents, often due to human error, and highlights pandemic-driven crew-change issues and events like the Suez Canal blockage as drivers for adoption. Customers include Kirby, Ray Car Carriers and NYK. The company was founded by naval-technology experts Yarden Gross and Dor Raviv, the latter a former Israel navy computer vision expert. The startup has raised over $15.5 million to date following its latest $13M Series A. Orca AI builds a ship collision-avoidance system that combines thermal and low-light cameras, additional sensors, radar and existing ship sensors to detect nearby vessels and alert crews. Its object-detection models were trained with open-source data, synthetic simulation data, and data from initial trials conducted last fall. The system can alert a captain about a ship up to six miles away and is primarily designed to detect boats near shore and in ports, where most collisions occur. Orca targets commercial vessels that carry dangerous cargo or operate in congested areas, and plans to add a recommendation engine to advise crews on how to avoid obstacles. The company says autonomous vessels will transform the industry and positions its product to support autonomous navigation infrastructure. Orca is based in Tel Aviv and currently has 10 employees.

Total raised

$111M

Funding rounds

4

Latest round

Series B

Latest activity

May 2025