Andrenam, a defense technology company developing AI-native sonar systems for maritime domain awareness, raised $18 million in a Series A round led by Upfront Ventures, with participation from Valor Equity Partners, Also Capital and First Round Capital. The investment brings total funding to $30 million and will support deployment of the PEARL passive acoustic sensor network, expansion of the OBSIDIAN software platform, and growth of engineering and field operations.
Scaling Persistent Undersea Awareness
Andrenam combines PEARL, a distributed passive acoustic sensor network, with the OBSIDIAN software platform to deliver real-time underwater detection, tracking and classification. The managed sensing model enables defense, homeland security, port security and commercial maritime organizations to access continuous undersea monitoring without operating complex sonar infrastructure.
"The undersea domain is becoming more crowded, more autonomous and harder to monitor with yesterday's tools," said Matej Cernosek, co-founder and CEO of Andrenam. "Andrenam is building the managed sensing network that lets customers maintain persistent awareness without tying up high-value platforms or scarce sonar specialists. This funding lets us put more systems in the water, move faster on OBSIDIAN and continue building the team to support real operational demand."
Expanding Maritime Securit
The company has built more than 35 PEARL systems, logged over 4,500 operational hours and demonstrated the technology during U.S. Navy exercises. The latest funding will accelerate commercial deployment as demand for autonomous underwater surveillance continues to grow.
"Sonar remains the gold standard for understanding what is happening beneath the surface, but historically it has been locked inside expensive systems and a small pool of highly trained operators," said Alex Chu, co-founder and CTO of Andrenam. "PEARL and OBSIDIAN are designed to make passive acoustic monitoring more distributed, more software-driven and easier to use across a much broader set of missions."