Europe’s first dual-use startup developing autonomous vehicles and systems for complex maritime operations.
Puglia and Milan, Italy – Mar 9: The sea is one of the most critical infrastructures on the planet. Over 80% of global trade moves by sea, more than 90% of Europe’s foreign trade depends on maritime routes, and around 95% of international internet traffic flows through subsea cables. Today, the global blue economy is worth more than $2.5 trillion and, according to international estimates, is expected to exceed $4 trillion by 2030.
Despite its economic and geopolitical centrality, the maritime domain remains one of the most complex and least digitized environments in the world: high operational costs, limited continuous observability, significant exposure to risk, and a strong reliance on human operators. This is compounded by an increasingly structural trend: a shortage of qualified professionals, with thousands of operational roles difficult to fill and a steadily rising average age among captains and operators. A fully human-centric model is struggling to sustain continuous, safe, and scalable operations.
It is within this context that Mirai Robotics was founded — a European AI robotics lab with the ambition to build the robotic infrastructure needed to make the sea more governable, safe, and observable.
Mirai Robotics’ systems are designed to enable persistent surveillance, patrolling, monitoring, and control, reducing human exposure to risk and significantly lowering operational costs compared to traditional models. The company focuses on the deep integration of autonomous vehicles, advanced sensing, artificial intelligence, and control systems, approaching autonomy first and foremost as an engineering and industrial challenge — not merely a software one.
From a product perspective, Mirai Robotics has already developed two autonomous vehicles designed for different operational needs, targeting ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) and patrolling scenarios in both coastal and offshore environments. The vehicles integrate advanced perception systems, autonomous navigation, remote control, and safety features, and are designed to operate either as standalone units or as part of distributed systems.
Alongside its proprietary platforms, Mirai Robotics also develops autonomy, navigation, and control solutions that can be integrated into third-party vehicles, enabling industrial and institutional operators to adopt autonomous technologies without having to fully redesign their existing fleets. This approach makes Mirai’s technology applicable across multiple civil and institutional use cases, following a dual-use by design logic.
The decision to start in Italy is deliberate. The country is historically a global leader in shipbuilding and maritime engineering, with internationally recognized excellence in defense, yachting, offshore, and marine infrastructure. Mirai Robotics was born at the intersection of this industrial heritage and a new generation of technologies based on advanced robotics, artificial intelligence, and autonomous systems.
Mirai Robotics positions itself as an AI robotics lab, not merely a vertical solution provider. Its goal is to develop physical autonomy technologies capable of operating in extreme, mission-critical environments, where reliability, safety, and control are non-negotiable requirements.
The company was founded by Luciano Belviso (CEO), Luca Mascaro, and Davide Dattoli, board member. Luciano Belviso has previously built and led highly complex industrial companies, including Blackshape, a benchmark player in aircraft design and manufacturing, later acquired by Angel Holding. Luca Mascaro is an entrepreneur and technological designer, founder of Sketchin, later acquired by the BIP Group, where he served as Chief Innovation Officer, with extensive experience in building digital products and technology platforms at international scale. Davide Dattoli is an entrepreneur, founder of Talent Garden, and an investor in the tech and education ecosystem, with a long track record in scaling innovative companies across Europe.
Around the founding team, Mirai Robotics has assembled a pan-European team with expertise in artificial intelligence, robotics, complex systems, and mission-critical operations. The team includes top professionals and collaboration with leading universities and research centers.
The company is headquartered in Puglia, chosen as a strategic hub between the Mediterranean, industry, and research, with the ambition of building a European center of excellence for maritime autonomy.
Mirai Robotics has closed a $4.2 million pre-seed equity round, one of the largest in Italy in the robotics and deep-tech sector, led by top VC Primo Capital, Techshop and 40Jemz Ventures, with participation from leading Italian and international angel investors. The capital raised will be used to accelerate technology development, strengthen the team, and launch new pilot projects with industrial and institutional partners.
“The sea is one of the last major physical infrastructures not yet governed by software,” says Luciano Belviso, CEO of Mirai Robotics. “Autonomy is the key to finally making the oceans safe and usable, unlocking enormous resources and addressing critical security challenges. But it must be implemented through systems capable of operating continuously and safely in extreme environments. This is a technological and industrial challenge that requires a true robotics-lab approach.”
“The maritime domain is at an inflection point. We’re looking at a huge economy that still relies on operational models designed decades ago. The human capital gap alone—thousands of unfilled roles, aging workforces, increasing operational risk—makes the status quo unsustainable. What Mirai Robotics is building isn’t just automation; it’s the fundamental infrastructure layer that will allow the blue economy to scale safely and efficiently. Italy’s shipbuilding heritage combined with this caliber of robotics and AI talent creates a genuinely unique opportunity” – Gianluca Dettori Partner at Primo Capital, lead investors in the round.
With Mirai Robotics, Italy strengthens its historic role in the blue economy, projecting it into a new phase where robotics and artificial intelligence become foundational infrastructure for security, industry, and the economies of the future.
