Neptune Robotics, which makes robots that clean the underside of giant ships, raised US$52 million to accelerate its artificial intelligence-fueled global expansion.
The funding round is a step toward a planned initial public offering in the US as soon as 2027, Chief Executive Officer Elizabeth Chan said in an interview. It will help the Singapore-based company expand its reach to as many as 30 countries as it targets the world’s biggest container-ship fleets.
Shipping companies are under pressure to make their vessels more fuel-efficient and environmentally friendly, spurring demand for Neptune’s services. The six-year-old startup’s 500-kilogram robots scour a ship’s hull, getting rid of barnacles, algae and other organisms that add weight and hinder its speed.
Chan, a Cambridge University graduate, founded Neptune with two friends in Hong Kong and moved the headquarters to Singapore this year. Sequoia Capital was an early backer, and the latest round is led by Singapore-based venture capital firm Granite Asia. Japanese shipping giant Nippon Yusen KK is also a strategic investor.
Neptune declined to disclose its valuation or key customers beyond Nippon Yusen, but said it serves the world’s top five bulk-carrier and container-ship fleets. Neptune has outpaced rivals such as Australia’s Hullbot and Norway’s Ecosubsea in fundraising, according to Pitchbook.
Biofouling — the buildup of marine life on a vessel’s submerged surfaces — increases a ship’s hydrodynamic drag and fuel consumption. Fouled hulls add as much as US$30 billion in extra costs to the global shipping sector each year, industry associations estimate.
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Neptune provides services in 60 Chinese locations, and Chan said its priority now is to expand in Singapore, one of the world’s biggest ports and the busiest refuelling stop for ships. A refuelling stop is also an opportunity to clean the hull, and shipowners want to do it in as little time as possible.
Neptune’s robots can clean giant Capesize vessels — those too large for the Panama Canal — in strong currents and murky waters in under 24 hours. The traditional method of using divers takes more time and can be more dangerous.
“For the Singapore market, we are just scratching the surface,” said Chan, adding the hull-cleaning demand for the city-state is equivalent to at least 10 regular ports combined.
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The company is increasingly using AI technology to control its robots, instead of having a human guide the cleaning process. The company feeds its own data to AI models such as DeepSeek and Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4 to develop agents for the cleansing job.
AI is the “single biggest reason” behind Neptune’s planned rapid expansion, Chan said. The company intends to test various AI models to find the ones best suited for the purpose, she said.
In Singapore alone, the help of AI means Neptune’s robots will be able to clean about 150 large cargo vessels each month by the end of 2025, a six-fold jump in capacity from a year ago. It plans to add more AI-powered robots for locations from South America to the Middle East, including the Suez and Panama canals.
AI for hull-cleaning “is like what Uber did to the taxi-hailing industry,” she said.
