Vatn Systems was founded in 2023 by Nelson Mills and a founding team focused on a long-neglected frontier of military autonomy: the undersea domain. While aerial and surface drones have proliferated rapidly, autonomous underwater vehicles have historically been expensive, bespoke, and produced in small numbers, leaving navies without the affordable, attritable undersea mass that modern maritime competition demands.
The company's core mission is to build affordable AUVs that act in cooperative swarms, enabling new mission profiles that single, costly vehicles cannot support. By driving down unit cost and designing for manufacturability, Vatn aims to make undersea autonomy deployable at the scale and price point needed for real operational impact.
Vatn's vehicles are built around modular configurations and advanced navigation software capable of operating in GPS-denied environments, a fundamental challenge underwater where satellite signals do not penetrate. Swarming behavior lets multiple vehicles coordinate for missions such as reconnaissance, mine countermeasures, seabed mapping, and persistent maritime surveillance.
Vatn raised a $13M seed round before closing a $60M Series A in December 2025, led by Veteran Ventures Capital (BVVC) with new investors including Hanwha, Geodesic Capital, Airbus Ventures, Dauntless Ventures, and Trousdale Ventures, alongside existing backers such as DYNE Ventures, Decisive Point Ventures, SAIC Ventures, and Lockheed Martin Ventures. The round brought total funding to roughly $76.5M and is being used to accelerate R&D, expand the team, and scale manufacturing to meet rising demand for deployable undersea autonomy.