Saronic's 4 Co-Founders on Building a $9.25B Shipbuilder | Part III

<p>Dino Mavrookas, Rob Lehman, Doug Lambert, and Vibhav Altekar are the 4 Co-Founders of Saronic, the autonomous maritime company that has gone from founding in 2022 to raising ~$2.6B at a $9.25B valuation in just 4 years.</p><p>The founding team brings together deep experience across defense, maritime autonomy, engineering, and investing: Dino spent 11 years as a Navy SEAL before joining Vista Equity Partners; Doug has built maritime autonomy systems since 2012; Rob spent 21 years in the Marine Corps before working across major defense contractors and startups; and Vib was one of Anduril’s earliest engineers.</p><p>In Part III of our Saronic series, we sit down with all 4 founders to go deeper into the business and technology behind its rapid rise and the demand driving it.</p><p>We cover America’s growing shipbuilding gap with China, why Saronic is investing $3B+ into Port Alpha, scaling autonomous ship production, rebuilding the U.S. maritime supply chain, defense acquisition reform, hardware-software co-design, AI at sea, and what happens when autonomous fleets scale from a handful of vessels to hundreds.</p><p><br></p><p><b>Dino Mavrookas: </b><a href='https://x.com/mavrookasd?s=11'>https://x.com/mavrookasd</a> </p><p><b>Doug Lambert: </b><a href='https://www.linkedin.com/in/doug-lambert-00463a1b/'>https://www.linkedin.com/in/doug-lambert-00463a1b</a></p><p><b>Rob Lehman: </b><a href='https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-lehman-8387634/'>https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-lehman-8387634</a></p><p><b>Vibhav Altekar: </b><a href='https://x.com/vbob202?s=21'>https://x.com/vbob202</a></p><p><b>Molly O’Shea:</b> <a href='https://x.com/MollySOShea'>https://x.com/MollySOShea</a> </p><p><b>Sourcery:</b> ⁠<a href='https://x.com/sourceryy'>https://x.com/sourceryy</a> </p><p><br></p><p>𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊</p><p>YouTube: <a href='https://youtu.be/2LQH5d93WzQ'>https://youtu.be/2LQH5d93WzQ</a></p><p><br></p><p>𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒</p><p>• <a href='https://brex.com/sourcery'><b>Brex</b></a>—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. <a href='https://brex.com/sourcery'>https://brex.com/sourcery</a> </p><p>• <a href='http://applied-ad.com/'><b>Applied Aerospace</b></a>—As global competition intensifies, strategic leadership demands space and defense technologies that deliver enduring national capabilities. At Applied Aerospace & Defense, we unleash the power of advanced manufacturing with unmatched scale and agility. Visit: <a href='http://applied-ad.com/'>http://applied-ad.com</a>  </p><p>• <a href='https://zonefrontier.com/'><b>Zone</b></a>—develops next-generation data center campuses, partnering with AI companies, site developers and technology leaders to bring compute online faster and at scale. Visit: <a href='https://zonefrontier.com/'>https://zonefrontier.com</a>   </p><p>• <a href='https://turing.com/sourcery'><b>Turing</b></a>—Turing delivers top-tier talent, data, and tools to help AI labs improve model performance—and enables enterprises to turn those models into powerful, production-ready systems. <a href='https://turing.com/sourcery'>https://turing.com/sourcery</a> </p><p>• <a href='https://fundrise.com/vcx'><b>VCX</b></a>—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio at <a href='http://getvcx.com'>http://GetVCX.com</a>  </p><p>• <a href='https://www.deel.com/sourcery'><b>Deel</b></a>—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery</p><p>• <a href='http://public.com/sourcery'><b>Public</b></a>–Investing platform Public just launched <a href='https://public.com/generated-asset'>Generated Assets</a>, which lets you turn any idea into an inve