Quartermaster, an Arlington, Virginia startup that mounts sensors on ships’ masts, has raised $140 million, TechCrunch reported on Monday. The package is a $100 million Series B led by Insight Partners plus a $40 million venture debt facility from Stifel.
The round comes four months after a $43 million Series A in May. Overmatch Ventures joined as a new investor, alongside existing backers including First Round Capital.
The product, SmartMast, bundles cameras and radios into a unit fitted to working vessels, relaying what it sees in real time to governments, shipping companies and insurers.
The point is to see past AIS, the automatic identification system ships use to broadcast their positions. Those signals can be switched off or falsified, which is exactly what vessels running sanctions or smuggling routes tend to do.
Quartermaster says SmartMast is installed on more than 650 vessels across 25 countries, that it has shipped more than 800 units, and that the network has covered almost 46 million square kilometres of ocean so far.
Founder and chief executive Neil Sobin said Insight pre-empted the round, and that the war in Iran and the shipping disruption it caused sharpened demand. When events create that kind of urgency, he said, a company has to seize the opportunity.
The unanswered question is the business underneath the coverage map. Quartermaster has not disclosed a valuation, revenue or how much of its income comes from governments rather than shipowners.
A network built on other people’s ships also depends on those owners wanting a watcher aboard after the crisis that made it urgent has eased.
