Since the 1950s, shipbuilding production in the United States has fallen by more than 85 percent.1 This part of the maritime industry requires large labor and capital investments as well as an overhaul of outdated operating models. Moreover, shipbuilding capacity often ramps up only during moments of tumult, though the dearth of shipyards that can handle building large vessels points to a true lack of capacity. Dino Mavrookas is seeking to change that. As cofounder and CEO of Saronic Technologies, Mavrookas aims to establish a larger, technologically enabled fleet of autonomous vessels ready for commercial and defense applications that can make the United States a global competitor in shipbuilding capacity. Since its start in 2022, the company has grown tremendously and aspires to continue its success.
McKinsey Senior Partners Brooke Weddle and Vik Sohoni spoke to Mavrookas about Saronic’s redefinition of the design and delivery process for shipbuilding, the company’s potential to improve naval efficiency and safety, and the culture needed to align a fast-growing company under a common goal.
The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
The new era of shipbuilding
Brooke Weddle: Dino, you lead a company that sits at the intersection of shipbuilding, autonomy, and defense. What was the gap that Saronic sought to address, or even transform, in the maritime sector? And how has your vision evolved over time?
Dino Mavrookas: We started Saronic to allow the United States and its allies to restore maritime superiority and naval power in the face of potential conflicts or adversaries. When we started the company in September 2022, there wasn’t a lot of advancement in the maritime industry in the United States. It was 20 years behind advancements in drone technology, for example.
Historically, naval power has been directly correlated with the industrial base, or the ability to build ships. Between China and the United States, for instance, there is a massive discrepancy in shipbuilding capacity. China can build 23 million gross tons of ships, whereas the United States can build 100,000 gross tons. We wanted to provide an asymmetric capability to the United States by building small, autonomous surface vessels that can be produced economically on a significant scale to deter a fleet that is much larger. Now, we build large, autonomous ships that can be integrated into a manned and unmanned hybrid fleet.
Brooke Weddle: How is Saronic disrupting the shipbuilding process from design to delivery?
Dino Mavrookas: We take a first-principles approach to building and manufacturing ships at scale. We start with the design, we build for autonomy, we digitalize the entire ship, and then we control the whole manufacturing and production process. Starting with the design allows us to build ships differently than other parts of the world do. We can design the ships to be produced at scale, and because we’re building for software and autonomy rather than putting people on the ship, we can strip 90 percent of the complexity out of the ship itself. For example, our autonomous ship, Marauder, is a 180-foot ship and has seven major components on it: water jets, engines, a fuel tank, bow thrusters, radars, a large computer, and whatever the payloads are.
The first-principles approach lets us build for modular construction, prefabrication, and parallel process tasks so we can build a ship quickly. We’re seeing this play out in our shipyard in Franklin, Louisiana, where we built the fastest ship in this country since World War II. So it starts with the design, leverages software and autonomy, and then adjusts the production and manufacturing side. Now, we’re thinking about how to change the culture around shipbuilding, how to rebuild and retrain the workforce, and how to motivate people. It all comes down to the mission, job security, and the resources and tools to be successful.
Brooke Weddle: Something that Saronic has emphasized from the start is the dual use of its products for commercial and defense applications. How might that vision play out over time?
Dino Mavrookas: Building commercial-first solutions is critical. The advantage of building for commercial first is that you are better able to invest in R&D to make your products better, build robust and resilient supply chains, and leverage economies of scale to drive down costs without sacrificing quality.
Port and harbor security and coastal monitoring are big, important markets. Our next goal is to get deeper into commercial shipbuilding. How do we start building cargo containers, bulk carriers, and oil tankers at a price point that is globally competitive? That’s critical—not just for the shipbuilding industry but for the United States economy as well.
Fostering sustainable, rapid growth
Brooke Weddle: Which Saronic products are you most excited about based on their performance or impact?
Dino Mavrookas: Our flagship product, Corsair, is a 24-foot autonomous surface vessel, or autonomous speed boat. It can provide asymmetric capabilities. What we’ve done with that product from a production standpoint and capability standpoint is amazing. We launched our first prototype of that product in July 2024, and now we have the capacity to build more than 2,000 Corsairs per year. The speed at which we’ve been able to execute and the autonomy that we’ve built have been great across our product lines, and this technology provides the military with new capabilities as well.
Additionally, we acquired the Franklin shipyard in April 2025. The yard has been around for 65 years, and more than 500 ships for both defense and commercial applications were built there. The company that ran it was closing, and the capacity in that yard was going to zero. But we need more shipyards in the United States. We need brand-new capacity. That’s what we’re investing in. By December 31, 2026, the infrastructure we’ve invested in is going to be fully online. We should be able to build 20 ships per year in that yard alone and then scale to 50 ships per year with increased investment.
Vik Sohoni: Tell us more about what you’d like to build at Saronic’s new shipyard and how your vision will play out at that destination.
Dino Mavrookas: The real vision for Franklin is to continuously expand into shipbuilding. Franklin is a 100-acre shipyard. We’re primarily focused on the Marauder, the 180-foot autonomous ship. We’re aiming to scale our production capacity up to 50 Marauders or Marauder-class vessels per year. We’re investing $300 million, and we have the other investments lined up and laid out. We plan to create 1,500 jobs on that site alone.
We’re going to take everything we learn there in terms of processes, workflow, and training and translate that to Port Alpha, our next-generation shipyard, which will be building the world’s largest and most advanced shipyard for autonomous ships. We’re focusing heavily on the commercial market, where we can build cargo containers, bulk carriers, and oil tankers, especially during a time of peace. We’ll also build defense products in Port Alpha, but the commercial and defense mix gives us the capability to get to the scale we’re looking for.
Brooke Weddle: How do you plan to scale your operations over time and evolve the operating model of the company?
Dino Mavrookas: We started 2025 with 200 people. Now we have more than 1,000 employees. Culture is something we think a lot about. How do we continue to reinforce the culture as we grow rapidly? We’re expanding across the country and the world. We have offices in Australia and the United Kingdom as well as eight locations in the United States.
It all comes back to the mission and making sure everyone is aligned. We host frequent town hall meetings to be transparent about why we started the company and why it’s important. Many people have stopped me to thank me for starting this company, because it gives them a chance to serve their country. And I immediately tell them, “No, you don’t thank me. I thank you for everything you’re doing here. It’s the work you’re doing that makes this all possible.” The culture revolves around the mission.
Vik Sohoni: Larger companies look at early-stage companies like yours and they’re envious about the speed at which you can move. But size creates complexity, and you’ve been growing at an exponential rate. How are you dealing with some of the complexities that come as you keep growing?
Dino Mavrookas: Focus. As a leadership team, we try to make sure that everybody knows what the priorities are and what can wait. If we can maintain that focus, we can maintain that speed. Then we have to build out our organization’s capacity so we can accomplish more things in parallel. That’s what we’re doing now.
Cross-industry talent united under one purpose
Brooke Weddle: You’ve attracted high-potential talent across the board, from skilled trades to engineering. What’s the value proposition you’re offering? In other shipyards, attrition rates are as low as 20 percent. How have you managed to create a culture that fosters higher retention rates?
Dino Mavrookas: We’ve attracted talent from across industries to bring into shipbuilding, including folks from leading aerospace and defense companies and world-class software engineers. We’ve combined the best and brightest across industries to take a fresh look at how we’re building this technology. At the shipyard, it starts with the design because it simplifies manufacturing. We’ve thought about the design, the work instructions, and the process flow so we can recruit people from other manufacturing jobs to build ships at Saronic. If they can’t transfer their skills, that’s our fault. That’s how we’ve rebuilt the workforce around shipbuilding.
Vik Sohoni: You require your employees to be based on site. In this age of remote and hybrid working, how do you maintain that approach and attract the best talent across the United States?
Dino Mavrookas: In-person culture has been critical since we started the company. It’s something we took a prescriptive approach to. One of the reasons why we chose Austin, Texas, as our headquarters—and believe me, I’ve been asked more than once why we started a maritime company in a landlocked city—was so we could recruit the best and brightest talent. Over the past few years, Austin started developing an ecosystem for high-quality tech talent. As we’ve expanded across the United States and internationally, we’ve maintained our approach. We’re not hiring people to work remotely in those locations; we’re opening offices, we’re bringing people together, and we’re immersing them in the Saronic culture. That togetherness helps us drive the culture forward.
Vik Sohoni: How do you get your business teams, technologists, and hardware teams to work together?
Dino Mavrookas: It comes back to that cohesive mission. It’s also as simple as having everybody under one roof so everybody sees, touches, and feels the things that we’re building. Our software engineers aren’t disconnected from the products as they write software code. They’re out on the boats with our hardware engineers and our mission operations and services team, testing the platform and seeing what works and what doesn’t. And we’re doing that hand in hand with the government to get real-time feedback. Our entire team contributes to this effort.
Brooke Weddle: One reason why Saronic is impressive is because of its incredible growth trajectory. You were a Navy SEAL and part of SEAL Team Six. What have you applied from your military background to your leadership approach?
Dino Mavrookas: One of the most powerful lessons that I took from my SEAL career is the importance of the mission. We’re driven by the importance of that mission and how critical it is for the country. What we’re building at Saronic isn’t just cool products; it’s necessary for the future of our national security. Every person in the company has bought into that.
I also learned from my SEAL teams how important speed and execution are. A good decision doesn’t always have a good outcome, and a bad decision doesn’t always have a bad outcome. You have to focus on the decision-making process. Make good decisions with the information that you have and then execute adeptly. A perfect plan with mediocre execution will lose to a mediocre plan with excellent execution every time. Our goal is to deter a conflict, regardless of when it happens.
How new technology will change a traditional field
Vik Sohoni: Your products operate autonomously in challenging environments. How do you ensure that the products will perform in these circumstances?
Dino Mavrookas: We invest heavily in real-world testing. We test all of our autonomy in simulation first, and then we validate it in a real application at one of our test sites, which are in each major body of water in the United States. We’re running tests with the government as well. We’re pushing the technology to its limits, seeing what works, breaking things, and iterating just as quickly. We push software updates daily, and within 24 hours of pushing an update, we’re testing it in an ocean. Within a week, we’re getting that update to the government. That’s the pace of iteration we need. We need to make sure that the autonomy is reliable and that the hardware platforms are just as reliable. One doesn’t work without the other.
Vik Sohoni: In addition to the physical assets you build, you’re also creating software and integrated command systems. Tell us more about those.
Dino Mavrookas: We have the best software in the world for the maritime domain, thanks to our software engineers. The autonomy we’ve built for our vessels includes everything from advanced single-agent autonomy that enables self-driving in congested ports to collaborative multiagent autonomy that allows many boats to do a collective mission. That’s advanced technology that, candidly, doesn’t exist in the maritime domain outside of Saronic.
We also put all of that together into an easy-to-use mission planner and interface that an operator can sit behind to control an entire mission with the click of a mouse and a few pushes of a button. We want to make it easy to plan, easy to operate, and easy to make decisions—basically, strip away the detailed cognitive load for that person and give them the few pieces of information they need to make those mission-critical decisions. That’s what our software enables.
Brooke Weddle: How will technology change the sector as it’s introduced to shipyards?
Dino Mavrookas: We’re trying to make the United States competitive again in the commercial shipping industry, and shipbuilding capacity is part of that. Commercial ships built in the United States cost three to four times more than a ship built in China, South Korea, or Japan. It’s difficult to compete economically in a market at that price point. As a result, China has 50 percent of global shipbuilding capacity, with the majority dedicated to commercial shipbuilding. If there’s ever a conflict, all of that commercial capacity will transform into defense capacity.
By building for autonomy and by digitalizing ships, we can evolve the market, bring down the cost of production, reduce material and labor costs, and make the United States competitive again. Our goal at Saronic is to stand up ten million gross tons of shipbuilding capacity, and a lot of that will be focused on commercial and defense applications.
Vik Sohoni: How do you see the industry evolving in the next few years?
Dino Mavrookas: The industry is evolving now. There is a lot of capital coming into the maritime space. Large shipbuilders and new start-ups are coming into the space, looking to execute the same way we have. And that’s good. We need investment into maritime.
We’re building the autonomous side of what the future naval fleet will look like. A hybrid fleet, manned and unmanned, does two things: It makes the fleet much more powerful and effective, and it keeps people safe. During my time in the SEALs, I saw combat quite a bit. It’s not Hollywood. Now, we have the capability to send robots into combat. How can we leverage robotics and autonomous platforms to keep as many people safe as possible so they don’t have to risk their lives? How can we keep destroyers and aircraft carriers at a safe distance and send robotic ships into the weapon engagement zones?
That’s the importance of what we’re building here. An aircraft carrier has 5,000 people on it. We can keep the ship and those people safe with the systems that we’re building here.