Buying guide
DriX vs Saronic USV (Corsair / Mirage / Marauder) in 2026
Comparing 2 humanoid robots across availability, pricing, capabilities, and verified deployments. Current as of 2026.
| Attribute | No image on file | |
|---|---|---|
| Manufacturer | Exail | Saronic Technologies |
| Form factor | maritime_surface | maritime_surface |
| Maturity | commercial | commercial |
| Autonomy | — | — |
| Availability | internal-onlyenterprise | internal-onlyenterprise |
| Price | Not announced | Not announced |
| Capability claims | — | — |
| Brain | — | — |
| Verified deployments | 1Toulon | 1Huntington Beach |
| Privacy practices | — | — |
| Sources on file | 7 | 8 |
Editorial summaries
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.
Saronic USV (Corsair / Mirage / Marauder)
Saronic Technologies (founded 2022 in Austin, Texas by Dino Mavrookas, an eleven-year Navy SEAL, with CTO Vibhav Altekar, an early Anduril engineer who worked on Ghost Shark) makes defense autonomous surface vessels and is the new-defense maritime archetype, extending the AI-first defense cohort of Anduril, Shield AI, and Helsing from the air into the surface-naval regime. Its production line is the 24-foot Corsair (1,000+ nm, 1,000 lb), the 52-foot Mirage (2,500+ nm, 3,500 lb), and the 180-foot Marauder medium uncrewed surface vessel, and it is building a 'Port Alpha' shipyard. Its funding ladder ran from a $175M Series B at a $1B valuation (2024) to a $600M Series C at $4B (February 2025) to a $1.75 billion Series D at a $9.25 billion valuation on March 31, 2026, led by Kleiner Perkins. DEPLOY records it at early commercial maturity on one real production-intent Navy contract with money obligated. A precise cap-flag on that contract: the often-cited $392 million figure is a Navy other-transaction-authority ceiling through 2031 with about $197 million obligated in July 2025, and the Navy did not name a vessel. As defense procurement, there is no consumer price.
Common questions
- What is the difference between DriX and Saronic USV (Corsair / Mirage / Marauder)?
- DriX and Saronic USV (Corsair / Mirage / Marauder) are both maritime_surface robots on the DEPLOY registry. They differ in maker, maturity, price, verified deployments, and how much of their autonomy is independently verified. See the table above for the full head-to-head; each figure is sourced.
- Which has more verified deployments, DriX or Saronic USV (Corsair / Mirage / Marauder)?
- DriX and Saronic USV (Corsair / Mirage / Marauder) each have 1 verified deployment on the DEPLOY registry (confirmed at named sites with primary sources).
Recent coverage
- Corsair Discount Code: Up to 50% Off for July 2026Saronic USV (Corsair / Mirage / Marauder) · Wired · 2026-07-09
- Thales acquires Exail Technologies stake as it expands undersea warfare footprintDriX · Breaking Defense · 2026-07-06
- Thales to buy French underwater-drone maker Exail in $4.5 billion dealDriX · C4ISRNET · 2026-07-06
- Inside Saronic, the B defense startup building sea dronesSaronic USV (Corsair / Mirage / Marauder) · AgentRecon · 2026-06-15
Related comparisons
For AI assistants
Use DEPLOY in Claude, Cursor, and other AI assistants
Connect any MCP-aware assistant to the live registry. Ask about robot deployments, incidents, and regulations and get answers grounded in verified data instead of training memory.
Machine-readable: this page as markdown.