Menlo Park, CA — September 9, 2026 — Bulwark Dynamics, a developer of autonomous landing craft, today announced $6.8 million in seed funding from investors including SBI US Gateway Fund LP, Archetype Ventures, Nēnē Ventures, and Onomichi Dockyard. Proceeds will fund development and production of the company’s Caravel series, the stand-up of manufacturing capacity, and testing in operationally representative environments.
The company also announced it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Onomichi Dockyard establishing a partnership for serial production of the Caravel series.
Sustainment is the binding constraint in any Pacific fight. Distributed forces cannot be resupplied through a small number of large, crewed vessels and fixed ports that an adversary can find and strike. Caravel is an unmanned surface vessel built to resupply expeditionary units over unimproved shorelines — no port, pier, or crane required. It is designed to transit, land on the beach, discharge its cargo, and retract fully autonomously, including in GPS-denied environments.
Sustainment has to survive to matter. Caravel takes people off the most exposed leg of the run and spreads the delivery across many low-cost hulls, so losing one is a bad day rather than the end of the resupply.
Nhat Lieu, Co-founder and CEO
In early 2026, the company demonstrated the full mission sequence with a Caravel 15 prototype: unmanned transit, beaching, cargo offload, and retraction off the beach, with no human intervention at any point.
Alongside the 15-foot variant, the company is developing 35-foot and 55-foot variants sized to carry one and four twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) of containerized cargo, respectively, sharing a common set of major components — a design choice made for producibility at scale.
Partnership with Onomichi Dockyard
Founded in 1943, Onomichi Dockyard is one of Japan’s leading shipbuilders, with a build record spanning bulk carriers, tankers, RO/RO vessels, and ferries. The group operates two slipways across western Japan and delivers approximately 350,000 gross tons annually.
Under the partnership, Bulwark and Onomichi will work together to build the Caravel series in Japan. In addition to using the existing Onomichi shipyard, the two companies are in discussions on establishing a site dedicated to serial production of unmanned vessels.
What’s next
With this funding, Bulwark Dynamics will accelerate the cycle of developing and validating production vessels and feeding back operational lessons, while working with Onomichi Dockyard to build the production capacity to field Caravel in numbers. The company is also expanding hiring across engineering, test operations, and business development in the U.S. and Japan.
About Bulwark Dynamics
Founded in the United States in 2025, Bulwark Dynamics is a defense technology company building autonomous landing craft, designed to sustain U.S. and allied forces in contested environments. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, and also operates in Tokyo, Japan.
Media contact — press@bulwarkdynamics.com
