Saronic's 4 Co-Founders on Building a $9.25B Shipbuilder | Part III

Dino Mavrookas, Rob Lehman, Doug Lambert, and Vibhav Altekar are the 4 Co-Founders of Saronic, the autonomous maritime company that has gone from founding in 2022 to raising ~$2.6B at a $9.25B valuation in just 4 years.

The founding team brings together deep experience across defense, maritime autonomy, engineering, and investing: Dino spent 11 years as a Navy SEAL before joining Vista Equity Partners; Doug has built maritime autonomy systems since 2012; Rob spent 21 years in the Marine Corps before working across major defense contractors and startups; and Vib was one of Anduril’s earliest engineers.

In Part III of our Saronic series, we sit down with all 4 founders to go deeper into the business and technology behind its rapid rise and the demand driving it.

We cover America’s growing shipbuilding gap with China, why Saronic is investing $3B+ into Port Alpha, scaling autonomous ship production, rebuilding the U.S. maritime supply chain, defense acquisition reform, hardware-software co-design, AI at sea, and what happens when autonomous fleets scale from a handful of vessels to hundreds.

Dino Mavrookas: https://x.com/mavrookasd

Doug Lambert: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doug-lambert-00463a1b

Rob Lehman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-lehman-8387634

Vibhav Altekar: https://x.com/vbob202

Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea

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