Saronic and South Korea's Samsung Heavy Industries announced a strategic partnership on Thursday to accelerate the development of autonomous maritime systems and support the rebuild of the U.S. shipbuilding industrial base. The agreement was unveiled at the launch of the Korea U.S. Shipbuilding Partnership Center in Washington, D.C., an initiative backed by the U.S. Department of Commerce and South Korea's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.
The pact pairs Saronic's work on autonomous surface vessels with Samsung Heavy Industries' decades of commercial shipbuilding experience. The two companies said they will collaborate on autonomy capable vessels for government and commercial buyers, and jointly explore AI powered digital tools, robotics based production automation, and next generation shipyard processes.
The announcement lands one week after Saronic picked Brownsville, Texas as the site of its planned $3 billion Port Alpha autonomous shipyard. Construction is set to begin later this year on an initial 835 acre parcel at the Port of Brownsville, with the yard opening in 2028 and eventually able to build vessels longer than 1,200 feet. Saronic says the facility could create up to 10,000 direct jobs over the next decade.
The Samsung deal also extends to production infrastructure, with robotics based process automation planned across Saronic's shipyards, including the new Texas site and its yard in Franklin, Louisiana. Saronic is pouring an additional $300 million into the Louisiana facility, which it picked up last year through the acquisition of Gulf Craft.
For Saronic, the tie up marks another step in its rapid shift from autonomous vessel developer to full scale U.S. shipbuilder. The company's Corsair autonomous surface vessel recently entered operational military service, and U.S. Central Command described what it called the first combat use of American sea drones during operations against Iranian naval infrastructure earlier this month. The Samsung partnership signals that Washington's push to revive domestic shipbuilding increasingly runs through allied Korean yards, whose scale and process know how U.S. entrants lack.