Quartermaster, a maritime intelligence startup based in Arlington, Virginia, has closed a $140 million Series B round. The funding follows a $43 million Series A closed in May and was preempted by software-focused investor Insight Partners, which led the round alongside defense-focused Overmatch Ventures and existing backers like First Round Capital. About $100 million came from equity, with the remaining $40 million structured as a debt facility from Stifel.
The company's core product, SmartMast, integrates cameras and radios into a package mounted on a ship's mast, capturing and relaying real-time maritime data. This goes beyond the standard automatic identification system (AIS), which only provides location pings. The richer data stream helps governments, shipping companies, and insurers avoid collisions, monitor congestion, and support search-and-rescue efforts.
Founder and CEO Neil Sobin said the round was driven by growing conviction in the thesis, accelerated by geopolitical events that disrupted shipping. He noted that the startup has shipped over 800 SmartMast units to customers, with more than 650 vessels now equipped across 25 countries. The gap reflects upcoming fleet-wide deployments, a sign that early adopters are scaling their use.
Quartermaster has doubled its manufacturing capacity to meet demand and continues to refine the hardware for faster production. Sobin said the company is exploring new uses for the data, which each mast records in tens of gigabytes per day, and that the maritime industry has been underserved by technology for too long. The new capital will support this expansion as the startup aims to fill what it calls the "largest blind spot on Earth."