The number of companies using artificial intelligence has almost doubled over the past year, reflecting a rapid integration of AI technologies in maritime products and operations. The Flagship Founders’ ‘Global Maritime Tech Startup Map 2024’ highlights that 16 companies, over the past year, from their 2023 Global Maritime Startup Map underwent mergers or acquisitions.
This represents over 10 percent of the total companies on their list; this a remarkably high number and provides a promising outlook for other ventures. Flagship Founders recorded notable trends among these acquisitions and mergers:
AI Technology
The report found that a growing number of listed startups are working with AI technology. “In 2025, 45 percent of all featured startups report using AI in their offering, up from 27.5 percent the previous year.However, AI integration is not evenly distributed across business segments. The ‘Condition & Maintenance’ category stands out, with a striking 72 percent of startups reported, having integrated AI into their products, more than in any other category. In the category ‘Communications & Information Management,’ 90 percent of startups founded within the past three years use AI, indicating that this segment is being transformed particularly quickly (in total, 56 percent of the startups in this category integrate AI).”
The rate of AI adoption in other areas is much lower, such as ‘Procurement’ – 28 percent; ‘Ports & Docks’ – 40 percent; and ‘Crewing & Crew Management’ – 33 percent. This suggests that the fields are either harder to tackle with artificial intelligence, or that their innovation potential is far from exhausted.
Funding and Geographic Trends
Moreover, the report stated that maritime tech startups have raised around USD 234 million in disclosed funding rounds. That’s an increase of about 73 percent compared to the previous year, when the total reached around USD 135 million. (Important note: Not all funding rounds are publicly disclosed. Flagship Founders only used publicly available data. The actual figures are likely higher, especially for early-stage startups.) The increase is largely driven by a few major later-stage funding rounds, with Orca AI alone having raised USD 72.5 million in a Series B round recently.
Flagship Founders highlighted that Singapore, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States continue to dominate the global maritime startup landscape, accounting for more than half of all listed companies. “One standout trend is the growth in Greece, where the number of Greek startups on the map increased from nine to fourteen, potentially signalling a strengthening innovation ecosystem in the Mediterranean. Taken together, Greece and Cyprus now rank third in terms of total number of startups, behind only Singapore and the UK.”
It shared another notable trend – thematic clustering by region. “The UK continues to confirm its position as a global finance hub, nearly half of all startups in the finance and insurance category are based there, along with about one-third of all startups in the chartering and trading category. Continental Europe leads in green tech and decarbonization: 80 percent of the startups in this category are based in the EU or EEA. This is likely due to the region’s strong leadership in emissions reduction legislation.”
Other regions show a high degree of diversity. Singapore, for example, not only hosts the highest overall number of startups (30), but, along with the US and Germany, also leads in the number of represented categories – with eight each.
Categorization
For its 2024 edition Global Maritime Tech Startup Map, Flagship Founders has included 149 software startups and scaleups operating within the maritime industry.The selection criteria remain stringent, requiring companies to have been founded within the last 10 years (post-2014), focus solely on software (excluding hardware), and operate independently without having been acquired, merged, or spun off from a large corporate entity, specifically within the maritime domain and not general logistics. It has not included the 16 companies that were acquired or merged within the last year and were on the 2023 map, as it doesn’t meet their scope of criteria anymore.
Flagship Founders divided the companies into ten principal categories – Finance & Insurtech;Chartering & Commercial (incl Freight Forwarding); Communications & Information; Condition & Maintenance; Crewing & Crew Logistics; Voyage Optimization & Performance (incl Weather); Ports & Docks; Cyber Security; Bunker & Lube Oil; and GreenTech & Decarbonization.
It should be noted that many companies do not exclusively fit into one category, and may offer several services that enable them to be, for example, in both ‘Communications & Information’ and ‘GreenTech & Decarbonization’. As such, each company has been placed into the most applicable category.
