Skana Robotics helps fleets of underwater robots communicate with each other

Autonomous underwater ships and robots can play a big role in defensive operations, but submarines have historically had difficulty communicating over large distances unless they rise to the surface. But coming to transmit poses a very clear risk of exposure.

Scana Robots She believes she has made significant progress in underwater communications using artificial intelligence, but not the large language models the industry touts today.

Tel Aviv-based Skana has developed a new capability for its fleet management software system, SeaSphere, that allows groups of ships to communicate with each other underwater over long distances using artificial intelligence.

The system allows ships to share data and respond to what they hear from other robots. This gives individual units the ability to independently adapt to the information they receive and change their course or mission while still working toward the same overall fleet mission, Scana says. The startup says its software can also be used to secure underwater infrastructure and supply chains.

“Inter-ship communication is one of the key challenges during the deployment of multi-domain, multi-ship operations,” Aidan Levy, co-founder and CEO of Skana Robotics, told TechCrunch. “The problem we are dealing with is how do you deploy hundreds of unmanned vessels in an operation, share data, and communicate at the surface and underwater levels.”

Teddy Lazebnik, an artificial intelligence scientist and professor at the University of Haifa in Israel, led the research to develop this new capability. To build this decision-making algorithm, they couldn’t resort to the latest AI techniques, but had to use slightly older, more mathematically oriented AI algorithms, Lazebnik told TechCrunch.

“The new algorithms have two properties: they are more robust, but as a result, they are less predictable,” Lazebnik said. “In theory, you’re paying for the performance or ‘wow effect’ of that algorithm, but older algorithms gain explainability, predictability and generality in reality.”

Skana Robotics was founded in 2024 and came out of stealth mode earlier this year. The company is currently focusing on selling to governments and companies in Europe, with increasing maritime threat levels due to the war between Russia and Ukraine.

Levy said the company is in talks about a major government contract and hopes to close by the end of the year. In 2026, Scana hopes to launch the commercial version of its product and begin proving its technology in the wild.

“We want to show that we can use this on a large scale,” Lazebnik said. “We claim that our software is capable of handling complex maneuvers, etc. And we want to show that. We claim that we know how to manage the process. We want admirals from the EU and EU countries to actually verify this argument and confirm for themselves that we are actually getting results.”