IMM Investment, a major venture capital (VC) firm in Korea, has made a new investment in a U.S. unmanned surface vessel specialist.
On the 22nd, IMM Investment said it participated in the $1.75 billion (about 2.7 trillion won) Series D fundraising round of Saronic Technologies (hereafter Saronic), a U.S. autonomous unmanned surface vessel specialist.
The round was led by Kleiner Perkins, regarded as a global top-tier VC, with Andreessen Horowitz also joining as a follow-on investor. The valuation was set at $9.25 billion, or about 14 trillion won. IMM Investment was the only domestic VC to make the list.
Saronic is a U.S. corporations specializing in the design of autonomous unmanned surface vessels and was founded in 2022. It is understood to have established not only autonomous navigation software technology but also a mass-production system.
IMM Investment was said to have decided on the investment by focusing on the intersection where the defense industry's innovation cycle meets the shift to physical AI—AI extending into the physical world—and the U.S.-China strategic rivalry.
In fact, Saronic is cited as a flagship corporations of "Port Alpha," the U.S. shipbuilding revitalization project for the autonomous navigation era. Thanks to that, its valuation, which was $4 billion (about 6 trillion won) at the start of last year during the Series C round, more than doubled in this fundraising.
IMM Investment said, "This investment is significant in that it was clinched through the global deal-sourcing network we have built based on overseas footholds and local partnerships in the United States," adding, "Saronic has also proven its technological prowess, mass-production capability, and government contract track record in the differentiated domain of maritime autonomous systems."