When explosions ripped through the Nord Stream pipeline in September 2022, sending natural gas bubbling to the Baltic Sea’s surface, Europe confronted an uncomfortable reality: critical underwater infrastructure is vulnerable, largely unmonitored, and surprisingly easy to sabotage.
The incident wasn’t isolated. Within weeks, an undersea cable connecting Norway’s Svalbard archipelago to the mainland was severed. Across the Baltic and North Sea, governments scrambled to increase patrols around subsea cables and pipelines. The problem became clear: thousands of kilometres of critical infrastructure lie on the ocean floor, and no one has effective, continuous surveillance.
Subsea cables carry 99 per cent of global internet traffic. They connect offshore wind farms to power grids. They link continents. And right now, most of them are inspected manually, infrequently, and at enormous cost, if they’re inspected at all.
This infrastructure gap is creating an unexpected investment category: autonomous maritime systems that serve both commercial efficiency and national security needs. Not by design, necessarily, but by necessity.
The companies building robots to inspect offshore wind farms are discovering their technology is equally valuable to navies protecting undersea cables. Startups mapping ocean floors for scientific research are being approached by defense agencies. And climate-focused investors are finding themselves in conversations they never expected to have.
These aren’t pivots or opportunistic repositioning. This is a fundamental recalibration of how critical ocean infrastructure gets built, monitored, and protected, and who pays for it.
Two markets, one technology
The economics are straightforward. An autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) that can navigate GPS-denied environments, operate in harsh conditions, and generate real-time subsea imagery solves problems for multiple customers simultaneously.
Offshore wind operators need those capabilities to inspect turbine foundations without shutting down production. Energy companies need them to monitor subsea cables and pipelines across thousands of kilometres. And defence agencies need them to detect threats to critical infrastructure before they become crises.
“If a robotic platform can efficiently service offshore wind farms and also reliably conduct subsea surveillance, it immediately taps into two distinct revenue streams,” explains Tien Nguyen, founding partner of Earth Venture Capital, a global deep tech VC “That’s a powerful hedge.”
But here’s the tension most investors are only beginning to navigate: these markets operate on completely different timelines, procurement processes, and risk tolerances.
Commercial offshore energy buyers want proven systems, fast deployment, and predictable costs. Defence agencies want security certification, compliance documentation, and long-term reliability guarantees. Bridging both requires operational sophistication most startups don’t have.
Yet the ones that figure it out are showing remarkable resilience. While purely commercial maritime tech companies struggle through energy sector volatility, dual-use companies are finding counter-cyclical stability, when commercial CapEx slows, defence budgets often accelerate.
Commercial validation, defence Adoption
Traditional defence contractors spend 5-10 years developing underwater systems from scratch. Meanwhile, commercial-first startups are accumulating thousands of operational hours in real-world conditions, achieving technical maturity that used to require a decade of military R&D.
Singapore’s BeeX is a case study. The company spent years building Hovering Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (HAUVs) for subsea inspections in offshore energy operations. The AI onboard was trained through over 5 years of commercial deployments, learning to navigate complex underwater environments, detect anomalies, and generate three-dimensional maps of subsea infrastructure.
In October, BeeX announced one of its largest contracts to date: a defence acquisition agreement with Singapore’s Ministry of Defence (MINDEF). The contract wasn’t a departure from the company’s commercial focus. It was validation that commercial operations had de-risked the technology for defence use.
“MINDEF’s decision is a signal that subsea autonomy is redefining defence readiness,” said Grace Chia, CEO of BeeX. The company is currently advancing its SGD 10 million Series A round, with over 50 per cent already committed from global investors who see defence contracts as proof of commercial viability, not a distraction from it.
That’s the inversion happening across the sector: defence validation is becoming a commercial asset.
What investors are learning
The dual-use model is forcing climate and infrastructure investors to ask new questions:
- Can a startup handle two completely different sales cycles? Commercial deals move in quarters. Defence procurement moves in years. The best companies build teams that can do both.
- Does the technology meet interoperability standards? Defence buyers won’t lock into proprietary systems. Startups that build modular, open-standards platforms have smoother certification paths.
- Is there genuine counter-cyclical resilience? The advantage of dual-use isn’t just more revenue, it’s stability through market volatility. When offshore wind CapEx contracts, can defence budgets pick up the slack?
Investors like Shift4Good and IMC Ventures are actively seeking companies with these characteristics, understanding that long-term government contracts can anchor a startup’s growth while commercial revenue scales.
But the playbook is still emerging. Export controls, certification timelines, and compliance requirements remain unfamiliar territory for most early-stage climate investors.
The conversation that needs to happen
On November 13, Earth Venture Capital is convening the stakeholders who are figuring this out in real time. The virtual panel “Scaling Dual-Use Maritime Technologies” brings together BeeX CEO Grace Chia, Shift4Good’s Su Ting Ho, IMC Ventures’ Jonathan Gan, and Ken Chan from the UK’s Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult.
The focus isn’t on pitching technologies. It’s on unpacking the operational realities: How do investors evaluate dual-use risk? What does the path to scale actually look like? How do research facilities, corporate buyers, and defence agencies collaborate to de-risk these bets?
These aren’t academic questions. As geopolitical tensions increase and critical infrastructure becomes more vulnerable, the companies that can serve both commercial and defence markets won’t just survive volatility, they’ll capitalise on it.
For investors building portfolios around climate resilience and critical infrastructure, understanding this shift isn’t optional. It’s fundamental.
The panel takes place on November 13, 2025, at 15:30-16:40 GMT+8. Registration details are available at luma.com/pg7pmjxc.
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