Wireless underwater technology company WSense, supported by EIT Digital Growth Services, closes €9M funding round

The Blue Economy is estimated¹ to be worth more than $1.5 trillion per year globally and this figure is expected to double to $3 trillion by 2030. For Europe², the Blue Economy plays a key role: it generates about 667.2 billion euros in turnover and 183.9 billion euros in gross value added, employing nearly 4.45 million people, weighing nearly twice as much as the United States’.

WSense - the blue tech company created as a spinoff of Rome’s Sapienza University enabling the Internet of Underwater Things with its “subsea wifi” systems - just successfully closed a series A round of €9 million led by SWEN’s Blue Ocean and joined by CDP Venture Capital SGR, RunwayFBU, Axon Capital Partners, Katapult Ocean, CoreAngels Climate and Moonstone.

Its patented technologies enable reliable, real-time, secure and cost-effective underwater wireless communications. This makes it possible to collect underwater data at an unprecedented scale, which disrupts the study and understanding of our ocean and the planet. It will also improve operational efficiency and open up a range of new possibilities - including critical infrastructure monitoring, energy transition, real time environmental monitoring and sustainable data-driven aquaculture.

Founded by Chiara Petrioli, a full professor of computer engineering at Sapienza University, who now serves as the Chief Executive Officer. The company offers unique solutions that guarantee adaptive wireless networking interoperability among multi-vendor underwater sensors and autonomous vehicles.

WSense is an EIT Digital 2022 Challenge winner and has been actively supported throughout 2023 by the Growth Services team in launching and coordinating the fundraising campaign, which generated strong interest from multiple investors across Europe.

With the successful completion of this series A round - which together with the previous seed round of €4 million in 2022 leads to a total equity funding in excess of €13 million - WSense will be able to boost its international expansion and pursue rapid growth, ramping up sales and operations of its revolutionary underwater wireless communications technology solutions, with Europe and Middle East as main target markets.