AndrenaM Raised $10 Million in 36 Hours to Bring AI to the Sonar Age

Defense technology is rarely associated with speed either in the water or on a cap table. But AndrenaM, a young startup building AI-powered sonar systems, has upended both. The company closed its $10 million seed round in just 36 hours, an unusually rapid timeline as investors see the need to upgrade undersea surveillance with modern tools.

Led by First Round Capital and backed by Also Capital, Long Journey, Homebrew, Banter, 201, Wavefunction, and the Colorado School of Mines Venture Fund, the round gives the startup the resources to double its team, accelerate deployment, and build its own custom hardware. For a company that only began operations in 2024, the velocity is striking.

AndrenaM was founded in Hawthorne, California, by Matej Cernosek and Alex Chu, who first met during their freshman year at the Colorado School of Mines. Both studied mechanical engineering. After graduation, Cernosek joined SpaceX, while Chu took roles in robotics and software engineering at Qualia, a real estate technology firm. They reconnected with a shared vision: modernizing the ocean’s least visible but most strategically vital a layer of intelligence.

Much of today’s sonar analysis still happens manually, a legacy of Cold War-era infrastructure like the SOSUS (Sound Surveillance System). Acoustic data flows to small control rooms where analysts use headphones and analog screens to identify signals from vast underwater spaces. AndrenaM aims to change that through automation.