A Plymouth-based startup developing marine robotics for navies and weather agencies has secured a £3.65m investment.
Oshen is building what it describes as a “persistent sensing layer for the world’s oceans”.
The company provides customers including the US Navy, the Royal Navy and the Met Office with swarms of small wind and solar-powered robots that provide wide-area monitoring of the open ocean.
Founded in 2022, Oshen has grown to a team of almost 30 and will look to expand after receiving this new capital.
The funding will support the scaling of its manufacturing, with plans to triple its production rate to meet the growing demand from navies, weather agencies and ocean scientists.
“We’re making the ocean’s eyes and ears, and we need a lot of them,” said Anahita Laverack, chief executive and co-founder of Oshen.
“Seventy per cent of the planet is ocean and we can barely see any of it in real time. That’s not a sensing problem anymore – the technology works, and it works in the worst conditions on Earth. It’s a manufacturing problem.
“So we’ve spent the last year turning C-Star production into something closer to a fast-food kitchen than a shipyard: fast, repeatable, and something you can stand up anywhere.”
The investment round was led by Lunar Ventures with participation from AlbionVC, Twin Track and Concept Ventures alongside a handful of angel backers.
“Governments and public institutions increasingly depend on reliable information about the oceans to improve weather forecasting, protect critical infrastructure and strengthen maritime security,” said Mick Halsband, general partner at Lunar Ventures.
“Until recently, persistent ocean observation relied on a handful of expensive platforms that could only sample a fraction of the domain. Advances in autonomy and manufacturing are making it possible to replace scarcity with scale. Oshen is among the first companies turning that shift into operational reality.”
