Quartermaster builds and deploys SmartMast, a hardware package of cameras and radios mounted on ship masts that captures and relays real-time maritime data. Founder and CEO Neil Sobin said the technology addresses what the company calls “the largest blind spot on Earth,” offering far more than the current standard of automatic identification system (AIS) location pings. The data can help ships avoid collisions, understand congestion in shipping lanes, and assist in rescuing lost mariners.
Sobin told TechCrunch that the war in Iran and resulting shipping chaos have driven conviction in the company’s thesis. “I think we’ve gained huge amounts of conviction in the core thesis,” he said. “A big part of the story for us this year was, events in the world drive that clarity and drive that conviction and urgency, and when you see that, you gotta seize the opportunity.”
Nick Sinai, managing director at Insight Partners, said in a statement: “Quartermaster is building a distributed network for the ocean, where reliable, real-time data has been difficult to come by. The team’s execution and the strong demand for maritime data and awareness made this an investment we wanted to lead, and we’re proud to back Neil and the team as they scale to meet the opportunity with commercial fleets.”
Quartermaster’s SmartMast is now deployed on more than 650 vessels across 25 countries, with over 800 units shipped. Sobin noted that the gap between deployed and shipped reflects the startup’s move to begin deploying SmartMast to entire fleets, indicating strong buy-in from early adopters.
Each SmartMast records tens of gigabytes of data per day, and Sobin said customers are discovering new uses for the data. “There isn’t a lot of prior art in maritime AI, and so it’s been exciting to, one, have our own source of data,” he said. “But two, there’s just so much low hanging fruit that we’ve been knocking down this summer in what you can start to build and then deliver value for our customers on.”
Sobin emphasized the startup’s focus on engaging with the maritime industry broadly. “This is an ignored field. Mariners around the world have been ignored by technology for a really long time, and so when they meet us, they’re so excited, because they’re like: ‘Oh, I have so many ideas, let’s work on them’,” he said.