Oshen, a Plymouth startup building swarms of ocean robots, has raised €4.27M in a round led by Lunar Ventures, with AlbionVC, Twin Track and Concept Ventures participating alongside a group of angel investors.
Two Imperial College engineers, Anahita Laverack and Ciaran Dowds, started the company in 2022. Its product is wide-area ocean intelligence delivered by fleets of autonomous C-Star robots, 1.2-meter vessels that run on wind and solar, are light enough to heave off any boat by hand and transmit data by satellite for months without upkeep.
The pitch is simple economics: navies buy a handful of billion-dollar ships over decades and spend much of that time tracking submarines across the North Atlantic. Oshen argues a persistent swarm of cheap robots can do much of the watching at a fraction of the cost.
The technology has already been tested in extreme conditions. In September 2025, working under contract with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, three C-Stars intercepted Hurricane Humberto north of St Thomas in the Caribbean, penetrating the eyewall while transmitting live data.
Beyond defense, the company sees markets in security and weather forecasting. Its robots can keep a low-cost watch on waters where sanctioned oil moves with transponders switched off, and on the undersea cables and pipelines that carry the world’s power and data. Better surface measurements could also give forecasters earlier warning of rapid hurricane intensification.
The fresh capital will scale production and expand the constellations Oshen can field, as demand grows from navies, agencies and insurers.
