Marine Propulsion Systems
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RAD Propulsion, a marine technology company, has closed a £4.4 million funding round to support its next phase of growth across electric propulsion systems and autonomous vessel technologies.
Led by Mercia Ventures, the investment reflects confidence in RAD’s ability to translate complex marine technology challenges into scalable products and platforms for defence and commercial markets. The funding follows a period of strong commercial and product momentum, during which RAD delivered major customer programmes, expanded its product portfolio and launched Axon, its open systems architecture for uncrewed and autonomous vessels.
Introduced at the Combined Naval Event in Farnborough in May 2026, Axon generated significant interest from defence and commercial organisations. The architecture enables boat builders and operators to rapidly develop, integrate and deploy uncrewed vessel capabilities while retaining flexibility over their choice of autonomy and mission software providers.
Axon also enables operators to avoid vendor lock-in throughout the life of their fleets by allowing vessel systems, autonomy software and mission applications to evolve independently.
Rich Daltry, RAD Co-CEO and founder, commented, “Autonomous marine systems are moving rapidly from concept to deployment, and the response to our Axon launch confirmed that RAD is well placed to capture this opportunity. We believe the industry is moving towards open, flexible vessel architectures that allow systems, autonomy software and mission applications to evolve independently. This funding gives us the runway to scale commercially, grow our electric propulsion systems portfolio and expand into key international markets. We’re grateful to both our new and existing investors for their continued belief in what we’re building.”
Ruth Coleman, investment manager at Mercia Ventures, said, “We watched electrification reshape road transport over the last decade. Marine is about to go through the same shift, and RAD is building the platform for it for manned and autonomous vessels alike.”
RAD will use the funding to support international expansion, Axon commercialisation, product portfolio development and engineering growth. The company has appointed its first US-based employee as it builds its presence in key international markets.
The investment will also support the continued development of RAD’s electric propulsion systems, energy management technologies and next-generation systems. RAD plans to expand its applications engineering and delivery capabilities to support increasing demand from defence and commercial customers.
