Andrenam, a dual use technology company building AI-native sonar systems for maritime domain awareness, today announced it has raised an $18 million Series A led by Upfront Ventures, with participation from Valor Equity Partners, Also Capital and First Round Capital. The round brings Andrenam's total funding to $30 million. The funding announced today will support continued deployment of Andrenam's PEARL passive acoustic sensor network, expanded rollout of OBSIDIAN software platform and growth of the engineering and field operations teams needed to bring persistent undersea awareness to defense, homeland security, port security, critical infrastructure and commercial maritime missions.
The round comes as undersea security is drawing new urgency across the defense and maritime sectors. Low-cost autonomy has already changed the economics of aerial warfare, and a similar shift is beginning underwater as unmanned underwater vehicles, semi-submersible systems and a rapidly growing Chinese nuclear submarine fleet become easier to acquire and deploy. At the same time, legacy sensing approaches remain expensive, coverage-limited and dependent on scarce specialists, creating a widening gap between the scale of the threat and the systems available to monitor it.
"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."
Andrenam delivers persistent, passive acoustic monitoring through PEARL, a distributed networked buoy, and OBSIDIAN, a software platform that turns acoustic data into actionable maritime awareness. PEARL streams acoustic data to OBSIDIAN for off-board, real-time fusion, tracking, classification and alerting. The company delivers the capability through a Contractor Owned, Contractor Operated managed sensing model, meaning customers can buy persistent coverage and actionable intelligence rather than another complex system to own, deploy and maintain.
"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 CTOof Andrenam. "PEARL and OBSIDIAN are designed to make passive acoustic monitoring more distributed, more software-driven and easier to use across amuch broader set of missions."
Andrenam has built more than 35 PEARL units across three generations of hardware and logged more than 4,500 in-water hours. The company has also demonstrated PEARL and OBSIDIAN in operationally realistic maritime environments, including Solid Curtain 2026 (a U.S. Navy fleet training exercise), and Lanternfish (alongside UUVGRU-1, the Navy’s premier unmanned undersea group. These efforts reflect Andrenam's broader approach: pairing undersea sensing expertise, deployable hardware, AI-native software and repeatable field operations in a single full-stack system.
"Contested waters are our future," said Mark Suster, Managing Partner at Upfront Ventures. "The world has spent decades assuming free movement over water, but that era is changing. Waterways are becoming strategic battlegrounds for trade, national security and geopolitical power, and visibility beneath the surface is becoming critical. Andrenam is building the passive sonar infrastructure to give countries and companies strategic insight underwater that they do not have today."
The company previously closed a $10 million seed round in 36 hours, led by First Round Capital, and has continued to build momentum with government, defense and maritime stakeholders.
"Recent global conflicts have shown us the devastating impact that marine autonomous systems can have," said Mike Annunziata, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Also Capital. "Protecting against these threats starts with the ability to quickly and accurately detect and classify them, two things Andrenam's PEARL and OBSIDIAN platforms were specifically developed to solve. Without this critical capability, the U.S. and its allies remain vulnerable. We're excited to continue backing Andrenam as they seek to turn the tide against these new, emerging threats."
About Andrenam
Andrenam is a Los Angeles-based dual use technology company delivering persistent, passive acoustic monitoring for undersea domain awareness. Its PEARL networked buoys and OBSIDIAN software platform turn underwater audio into actionable maritime intelligence for defense, homeland security, critical infrastructure and commercial maritime customers. As a Contractor Owned, Contractor Operated managed sensing service, Andrenam deploys and operates distributed sensor networks so customers can buy persistent coverage rather than another complex system to own.
Learn more at https://www.andrenam.com.
Media Contact
Kevin Boland
andrenam@weareinvariant.com
