Vessev just landed America’s first electric hydrofoil ferry contract

A hardware export story, for once

Most New Zealand tech export stories are about software, SaaS or services, sectors where the capital is light and the export mechanism is a download. Vessev is different. The Auckland company builds a physical, high-value product, a nine-metre electric hydrofoiling catamaran, and it is now shipping that product to fleet operators around the world.

The company has raised $32.6 million (US$19 million) in a Series A and follow-on round led by Blackbird Ventures, funding a direct push into the United States. The anchor customer is FlyTahoe, which will run America’s first electric hydrofoil ferry service across Lake Tahoe in California. That is a concrete, verifiable export win, not a pilot deck or a concept render.

Why the boats actually sell

The commercial case is efficiency. Conventional displacement hulls have to push water aside to move, which makes them inherently thirsty. A foiling vessel lifts its hull clear of the surface on carbon fibre foils, the same principle as America’s Cup yachts, slashing drag and making battery-electric operation viable over real distances.

CEO Eric Laakmann put it plainly, saying boats were “fundamentally inefficient” because they had to displace water to move, and that hydrofoiling was “the big unlock” that made electrification work. The VS-9 carries 10 passengers, cruises at 25 knots and ranges up to 50 nautical miles, at a base price of US$576,000. In September 2025, Forbes Australia reported Vessev’s claim of up to 90% lower energy costs versus conventional vessels, a figure that, if it holds at scale, rewrites the operating economics for ferry companies.

Already in the water on four continents

This is not a company promising boats. Vessev’s first commercial VS-9 went into service with Auckland operator Fullers in 2025. Vessels are being trialled on Lake Whakatipu at Queenstown to ease highway congestion, a second boat is being built for tourism on Lake Taupo, and Australian projects in Hobart, Perth and Sydney are due for first delivery in 2027. In September 2025, NBR confirmed the company’s first European customer, a luxury eco-resort in Northern Ireland.

Laakmann’s confidence is earned. “We’ve put boats on the water, at this point they’ve been in commercial service, they’ve worked, they’ve been reliable and separately we’ve got a global pipeline filling up,” he told RNZ. Crucially, “most of our customers are fleet operators, so they want fleets of these vessels.” Repeat orders, not one-offs.

Turning the Jones Act into a moat

The smartest part of the US play is regulatory. The Jones Act of 1920 requires vessel keels to be built in America for domestic commercial operations, which could have been a wall. Instead, Vessev is treating it as a localisation strategy. The company opened its first international office in Rhode Island in March 2025, appointing Josh Trout as US Director, and has identified US builders capable of meeting its quality standards for domestic production.

US-built boats, US jobs, US supply chain. That is a far harder position for foreign competitors to copy than simple export, and it fits Vessev’s broader distributed model of exporting hull moulds and supplying foils and control systems to licensed builders. In March 2025, Laakmann, who is American, said “nothing would make me prouder than bringing New Zealand innovation to the States.”

The manufacturing question

Building a hardware export business from New Zealand is the hard road, and the numbers show Vessev is walking it. Auckland headcount has grown from 14 to 58 in roughly two years, with America’s Cup and Tesla alumni on the floor. In June 2025, a Boating NZ factory tour described the shift from hand-built construction to repeatable carbon moulds and a planned five-cell assembly line, targeting one boat every five weeks by 2027. The roadmap standardises around three platforms, the 9-metre VS-9, a 12-metre variant and an 18-metre commercial ferry, so this is not a one-boat company.

The Lake Tahoe deployment was no accident. Laakmann drew a direct line to Queenstown, both being lake communities where roads were built around the water, expansion is geographically constrained, and traffic has “become a big headache”. Water transport there is not a novelty, it is infrastructure.

The funded question now is execution, hitting production cadence and standing up compliant US manufacturing while orders stack up. But the argument that clean-tech manufacturing has to be a subsidised science project no longer survives contact with Vessev’s order book.

Sources

• NZ marine tech company Vessev raises $32 million in funding for US expansion (2026-08-21)
• NZ hydrofoiling start-up Vessev goes global (2025-09-08)
• New Zealand electric hydrofoiling ferry firm expands to US (2025-03-26)
• Behind the foils: Inside the Vessev factory (2025-06-27)
• Lightweight Composites Help Vessev Launch its All-Electric Hydrofoil Boats