The announcement builds on the company’s recent introduction of its Liberty Class, a 190-foot autonomous ship designed for the US Navy, currently under construction at Conrad Shipyard. It comes as the Navy and broader defense ecosystem accelerate toward producible, autonomous ships, in support of the Navy’s Medium Unmanned Surface Vessels program, the fleet’s largest unmanned initiative with more than $6 billion of funding.
“Traditional shipbuilding doesn’t scale, and pure software approaches don’t deliver hardware,” said Rylan Hamilton, CEO of Blue Water Autonomy. “We’re doing both. Integrating proven marine systems with AI-driven manufacturing and operations to fundamentally rethink how ships are built. By distributing and parallelizing work across proven partners, we’re creating a production system that can move at the pace required for a modern maritime industrial base.”
At the core of Blue Water’s model is a network of best-in-class partners across critical shipbuilding components and manufacturing infrastructure:
- Tulip powers Blue Water’s AI-native manufacturing execution system, enabling real-time orchestration of production on the factory floor.
- Caterpillar Defense provides proven, field-tested, marine diesel engines that power Blue Water’s vessels.
- Precise Power Systems designs and manufactures fully integrated containerized engine modules designed to operate autonomously for extended durations without human intervention.
- Valstad develops advanced manufacturing automation systems, including modular structural panel kits and robotic fabrication cells to power distributed ship production.
“Shipbuilding has always required extraordinary coordination, and we’re giving that coordination a software backbone,” said Erik Mirandette, Chief Business Officer at Tulip. “Tulip connects every step on the factory floor with real-time data and AI-native tools, so Blue Water can orchestrate production at scale, catch issues earlier, and build with the speed and reliability that modern maritime demands.”
Together, these partners enable Blue Water to digitize and orchestrate shipbuilding from the ground up, transforming traditionally manual, fragmented processes into a scalable, software-defined production system. The result: speed, flexibility, and resilience.
The announcement builds on Blue Water’s broader strategy to modernize maritime manufacturing by pairing established industrial capabilities with next-generation software infrastructure, enabling faster iteration, improved reliability, and increased production capacity across a network of partners.
Shipbuilding and testing of Blue Water’s vessels are already underway, with the company currently executing an accelerated testing program and targeting a live autonomy demonstration later this summer.
