Saildrone catches a $100M C breeze to build more robo-boats – TechCrunch

The ocean economy is growing in importance, and with it grows the need to map, understand, and track the ocean itself. Saildrone has been doing just that with its fleet of autonomous science vessels, and the company has now raised a massive $100M round C to pursue its ro-boat aspirations further. Saildrone's boats have been in continuous use for years now, making all kinds of interesting voyages that would be too dangerous or too tedious for a human crew to attempt. For instance earlier this month one of the vessels sailed straight into a hurricane for a NOAA project to better understand these increasingly frequent and violent storms. Good luck getting someone to brave 50-foot waves and 120 MPH winds to collect some data when there's a robotic option.