Key Points
- Spear AI, a startup founded by Navy veterans, has raised $2.3 million in its first funding round.
- The company utilizes AI to assist submarines in analyzing underwater sounds and identifying potential threats.
- Their technology focuses on labeling and organizing complex acoustic data, enabling it to be utilized by AI.
- The U.S. Navy has recently awarded the company a $6 million contract for its data labeling tool.
A startup founded by U.S. Navy veterans is utilizing artificial intelligence to assist the military in deciphering sounds collected by submarines. The company, Spear AI, has just raised its first round of outside funding to help expand its operations.
Spear AI specializes in analyzing “passive acoustic data”—the sounds picked up by underwater listening devices. The goal is to utilize AI to enable submarine operators to quickly determine whether a rainstorm, a whale, or a potential threat from another vessel causes a sound.
The primary challenge is that most AI tools are trained on neatly organized and labeled data, such as images or text. Underwater sound is messy and raw. To solve this, Spear AI’s founders—a former Navy SEAL analyst and a former nuclear submarine commander—have built a system to prepare this data for AI.
The company sells sensors and a software tool that helps label and sort acoustic data, enabling AI algorithms to make sense of it. The U.S. Navy has recently awarded Spear AI a $6 million contract for this data labeling tool.
The Washington-based company raised $2.3 million from private investors. The founders said they will use the new funds to double their staff and support both their government contracts and new commercial business, such as monitoring underwater pipelines and cables.
