The Defense Tech Underground

015: Rylan Hamilton & Austin Gray – Blue Water Autonomy: Building the Navy’s Future Fleet

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Rylan Hamilton and Austin Gray are co-founders of Blue Water Autonomy, a venture-backed defense tech startup designing and building the next generation of autonomous ships for the U.S. Navy and beyond.

Hamilton began his career as a Surface Warfare Officer in the Navy before moving into robotics. He joined Kiva Systems (later Amazon Robotics), where he scaled warehouse automation from thousands to tens of thousands of robots, and went on to co-found a robotics company acquired by Shopify for hundreds of millions. Gray started as a Navy intelligence officer, later helped launch defense tech initiatives at MIT, and spent time in a Ukrainian drone factory before turning to maritime autonomy. Together, they founded Blue Water Autonomy to tackle one of America’s most pressing challenges: revitalizing shipbuilding and expanding the Navy’s fleet with cost-effective, autonomous vessels.

In this episode of Defense Tech Underground, we sit down with Rylan and Austin to explore how autonomy at sea is reshaping the future of maritime power. We cover:

  • Engineering autonomy – solving the hard problems of redundancy, endurance, and reliability in ocean-going ships without crews.
  • The hybrid fleet vision – how unmanned vessels will complement destroyers, frigates, and carriers, carrying payloads without putting sailors at risk.
  • Crawl, walk, run – why a phased approach to shipbuilding beats the Navy’s traditional “build once for 40 years” model.
  • Dual-use opportunity – where autonomy at sea can extend to commercial sectors like tugs, ferries, and logistics, once regulatory barriers fall.
  • Founder lessons – obsession, grit, and timing: why conviction matters, and what advice they’d give to future defense tech entrepreneurs.

    • This conversation highlights how two veterans turned robotics entrepreneurs are bringing private capital, Silicon Valley speed, and deep Navy experience to one of the hardest problems in defense: building ships faster, smarter, and more resilient.

    This episode is hosted by Josh Pickering and Jeff Phaneuf.

     

    Full Bios:

    Rylan Hamilton

    Rylan Hamilton is co-founder and CEO of Blue Water Autonomy. He served as a Surface Warfare Officer in the U.S. Navy before beginning a career in robotics at Kiva Systems, which was later acquired by Amazon to become Amazon Robotics. He co-founded 6 River Systems, a warehouse robotics company that scaled globally before being acquired by Shopify. Hamilton brings two decades of experience at the intersection of defense, robotics, and entrepreneurship to leading Blue Water Autonomy.

    Austin Gray

    Austin Gray is co-founder and President of Blue Water Autonomy. He began his career as a Navy intelligence officer, serving on aircraft carriers in the Middle East and South China Sea before earning his MBA at Harvard Business School. He co-founded and helped run the MIT–Harvard Defense Tech Initiative and worked in Ukraine’s drone sector before turning his focus to maritime autonomy.

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