'We can no longer afford to be blind': Danish startup raises funds to build underwater CCTV-like tech to track drones and more

Copenhagen-based Triton Depth, a three-person startup founded in 2025 by engineering students from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), has closed €1 million in pre-seed funding to develop a networked underwater acoustic surveillance system. Investors in the round include London-based The Creator Fund and Denmark’s state-owned Export and Investment Fund (EIFO). The company plans to deploy low-maintenance passive acoustic sensors, dubbed “Triton Nodes,” and pair them with AI to detect and classify underwater vessels and objects in real time.

"We aim to build the intelligence layer for the ocean," said Carl Borg, CEO and co‑founder of Triton Depth.

What Triton Depth is building

Triton Depth’s product concept centers on clusters of passive acoustic sensors that listen to the seabed and waters above, feeding sound signatures into machine learning models for classification. The company positions the Triton Nodes as a scalable, affordable “first line of defense” for maritime and subsea infrastructure, intended for both civilian and defense uses.

• Founding and team: Established in 2025 by three DTU engineering students and headquartered in Copenhagen.
• Funding: €1 million pre-seed round with participation from The Creator Fund and Denmark’s EIFO.
• Technology: Passive acoustic sensors (“Triton Nodes”) plus AI-based real-time signature classification.
• Market focus: Dual-use deployment for coastal monitoring, subsea infrastructure protection and defense.

The investment arrives amid growing concerns about the security of subsea infrastructure across Europe. Triton Depth and its investors point to recent sabotage incidents in the Baltic Sea and the heightened risk of drone-enabled naval warfare as drivers for developing affordable monitoring solutions. The company highlights vulnerabilities that include power interconnectors, data cables and offshore wind installations — assets increasingly critical to national and regional economies.

EIFO’s involvement signals a state-level interest in bolstering domestic maritime situational awareness. Triton’s acoustic approach is presented as a cost-effective alternative to the expensive platforms fielded by major naval powers, trading high-end hardware for distributed sensing and AI-driven analysis. The founders argue that even partial detection and classification capability would materially improve early-warning and forensic ability for coastal states.

Technical claims emphasize the passive nature of the nodes — designed for low maintenance and continuous operation — and the ability of the AI to identify vessels and objects in real time from acoustic signatures. Triton Depth intends to market the system as dual-use, addressing both commercial infrastructure protection and defense or security applications.

Looking ahead, Triton Depth will need to validate its acoustic models across diverse maritime environments and demonstrate reliable detection rates in operational settings. If successful, the company could tap into a broader European push for scalable maritime monitoring, as governments and private operators seek affordable ways to protect subsea assets from sabotage, covert operations and emerging underwater drone threats. For now, the €1 million pre-seed gives the three‑person team runway to prototype Triton Nodes and refine their AI classification stack.