Scaling production is hard. Luckily for UK-based unmanned surface vehicle (USV) startup Kraken Technology, they’ve just partnered with German shipbuilding big dog NVL to ramp up manufacturing of their speedboat drones at NVL’s Blohm+Voss shipyard in Hamburg this year. Helps to have friends in high places.
Go fast: Kraken’s roots are in manufacturing racing speed boats, but like many other European startups, they’ve taken a sharp pivot towards defense in the past few years (wonder why). They have a few USVs on offer, but their most popular (and the focus of the joint venture with NVL) is the K3 Scout.
Kraken has three modular variants of the Scout:
- Medium: 8 meters long with a 600kg payload and a top speed of 55 knots (roughly 60mph).
- Heavy: 12 meters long with a 2,000kg payload and a top speed of 55 knots.
- Max: 18.6 meters with a 10,000kg payload and a range of 2,000 nautical miles.
The Scout costs around £250,000 ($338,100) each, and Kraken has already sold over 100 this year alone, according to Kraken CEO Mal Crease. Customers include the UK’s Ministry of Defence and other NATO governments.
Ramping up: Meanwhile, NVL, a group of German shipyards, has a 150-year history of making big boats—including frigates and corvettes—for Germany’s navy. “They have massive facilities already in place that will allow us to manufacture at scale extremely quickly,” Crease told Tectonic. “It gives us access to supply chains and labor, which is a very big consideration.”
Meeting in the middle: NVL doesn’t make boats as small as Kraken’s, but NATO governments are eying these small and medium-sized USVs as a key part of the future fleet. We’re guessing this has a lot to do with the fact that Ukraine has been able to take out a big chunk of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet with them.
“Our sweet spot at Kraken is really anything up to about 75 feet. NVL’s area of expertise is anything above 150 feet, but there is a growing area in between,” Crease said. “The marriage of our understanding of high-performance smaller boats combined with their larger vessel capacity allows us, in partnership, to address this mid-sized space very quickly.”
That middle ground—think modular support boats, autonomous ISR platforms, and drone motherships—is becoming a big priority for NATO navies. “Kraken has already sold out its inventory for this year. We’re already into next year, and we’re only halfway through the year,” Crease said. “So we’re trying to think ahead, given the size and scale of the opportunity in this market sector.”
Beyond production: NVL’s interest in Kraken goes beyond the shipyard. They’ve already taken an equity stake in the startup and hold an option to invest in a follow-on round later this year. However, Crease says he isn’t necessarily feeling the pressure to raise a ton of money. “We’ve successfully managed to deliver contracts and revenue without the need to raise vast amounts of money, and the partnership [with NVL] means that we don’t have to raise money to build facilities.”
Hardware first: For now, Crease is laser-focused on the hardware side of the equation, but said “software is becoming an increasingly important part for us now.” That could mean some exciting new software partnerships to come.
Kraken teamed up with Auterion last year to implement its autonomy operating system on the Scout, and Crease hinted they could partner with others to build out their software stack.
First steps: The first NVL Kraken boats are expected to roll off the line in late 2025, with initial production focused on the Scout platform. Future variants, according to NVL, could plug into larger manned-unmanned teaming systems, including NVL’s NTV 130 support ship—a potential mothership for surface drones.
With increasingly stiff competition in the maritime autonomy space, scaling production quickly will be key for Kraken to keep its edge and meet demand. And when you’re trying to build things fast, it never hurts to have a 150-year-old German shipbuilder in your corner.