DriX vs SM300 / SM200 in 2026

DriX

Exail's DriX is the commercial-surface entry of the maritime cohort: an autonomous surface vessel for hydrographic survey and defense mine countermeasures, running the CortiX autonomy stack (supervised autonomous navigation and obstacle avoidance, fusing camera, infrared, LiDAR, and radar across surface and underwater). It is made by Exail, the merged ECA Group and iXblue entity (France), and is dual-use across survey and defense.

DEPLOY records it at the vehicle level (the DriX USV, not the Exail parent). It is sold to survey operators and navies on contract; there is no consumer price.

SM300 / SM200

Sea Machines Robotics (Boston; founded by Michael Johnson) is the autonomy-system-vendor archetype of the maritime category: it makes the autonomy brain, not the boat. Its SM300 and SM200 autonomous-command systems are vessel-agnostic retrofit kits, about ten components installed in two days or less on existing or new-build workboats from 10 to 300 feet, so the customer owns and operates the hull while Sea Machines licenses the autonomy onto it.

The September 2025 SM300-NG adds class-society-approved hardware, a 200-percent compute increase, full voyage control with collision avoidance and sensor fusion, and worldwide remote command, alongside an attritable SM300-SP defense variant. A late-2024 leadership change brought David Wasson (formerly of Huntington Ingalls) in as CEO with founder Johnson moving to president and CTO, a defense-pull hire on a $10M Series C (March 2025) and about $52M total raised.

DEPLOY records it at commercial maturity on a real shipping product, class-society approval, and more than 200 systems delivered worldwide, and it credits the company with units delivered rather than sea-days, since its autonomy runs on other companies' hulls. The SM300-SP claim of more than 100 units a month is a stated production rate. As a B2B autonomy licensing business, no consumer price is published.