Wellington firm helping protect subsea cables from sabotage raises $23m

Sunday, 14 September 2025

Starboard’s raw materials include satellite data, subsea sensors and what it describes as CVs it is up building up of “every vessel on the planet throughout history”.

A Wellington firm that is using AI to help protect submarine cables from accidents and sabotage as far away as the Baltic Sea, and prevent other activities such as illegal fishing, has raised $23 million from venture capital firms for the next stage of its expansion.

Starboard Maritime Intelligence has seen the market for its services grow as a result of heightened geopolitical tensions.

Russian vessels are among those that have been implicated in attacks on the subsea internet cables that keep countries connected. In December, Finnish authorities seized a Russian oil tanker they suspected of cutting power and internet cables linking Finland and Estonia.

Starboard uses satellites observations and a growing database of information about vessels to train software algorithms to identify and warn customers about ships that might cause different kinds of trouble.

But chief executive Trent Fulcher said the firm had a roundabout route to finding its niches.

It’s software was spun out of what used to be the Government-funded Centre for Space Science Technology — later renamed the Xerra Earth Observation Institute — based ironically in one of New Zealand’s most land-locked towns, Alexandria.

Starboard Maritime Intelligence chief executive Trent Fulcher says the company has a good opportunity to remain an NZ headquartered firm.

“They brought on some really smart academics and data scientists to use geospatial data, including satellite data, to do analysis on things that would have a positive impact on the environment or humanity.”

But it didn’t have a sustainable business case until the Ministry for Primary Industries asked it to build an algorithm to predict which containers in which vessels might have the highest risk of bringing exotic pests into the country.

“That was the first ‘user case’ and it sort of expanded from there. Another division said, ‘hey, could we track Covid coming into New Zealand? Could we track illegal fishing?

“Three or four years later, we had a customer that said ‘we've got a real problem with fishing trawlers that are ripping up our cables with their nets — can you identify risky vessels that we can use your product for?’ And that was our first subsea cable customer.”

The data that it trains its algorithm on to detect threats to subsea cables includes information on “literally billions” of ship movements each day from satellites, land-based receivers and vessel receivers.

“Then we bring in a whole lot of ‘situational’ data to determine who owns this vessel, what's its history has been, who do they hang out with, what criminal convictions do they have, and we build up a ‘CV’ of every vessel on the planet.”

One of the biggest technical challenges the company has had to face is the sheer amount of live data it needs to process, Fulcher said. “Doing it in real time is a real computing challenge. We've been able to crack that, which is great.”

Preventing sabotage is a growing part of the company’s business, he said.

“There are two ways we're tackling it. We're getting better at understanding the behaviours of sabotage but, secondly, we're now pulling data from the cables themselves.

The strands of optical-fibre that carry communications traffic between countries have proved a weak link in the era of covert conflicts.

“We have listening devices and technologies that come from the cables so you can see which vessels are coming near a cable area when they might be five kilometres out and whether, as they move closer, their behaviour changes.

“Our system can tell us that, and then if they come in contact with a cable, we know immediately. So we've been able to lead the market in terms of identifying risk and actually preventing risk.”

Some of the situations its software has helped customers with are “kind of secret squirrel stuff, where they can't ‘confirm or deny’”, he said.

“It’s frustrating not to be able to talk about because they are pretty exciting.”

Fulcher said Starboard has several customers in Northern Europe that are using its services in the Baltic Sea, and was now helping protect 840,000km of subsea cables.

The bulk of the $23m the company had raised from investors including Auckland fund Altered Capital and Australian funds OIF Ventures had been based on a $53m valuation for the firm.

The new funding it had received would help it further develop its technologies and grow its team, which now numbers 32 staff, about a dozen of whom are based overseas.

“It’s really all about market expansion. We provide services to ‘Five Eyes’ partners in New Zealand and Australia and we're really doubling down in the US market, as well as with the UK.

“With subsea cables, which is a global market, we're putting more resources in those key areas, so the North Sea, the Baltics, Singapore, and the US as well.”

Although the majority of its business is “steadily creeping offshore”, Fulcher said Starboard had a good opportunity to remain a New Zealand headquartered firm.

“Our investors have bought-in wanting to build a great Kiwi company, so there's no talk about moving Starboard anywhere else.”