For centuries, ships crossed oceans guided by paper charts and manual logs. Now, as global trade routes are redrawn by geopolitical storms, investors believe the maritime sector’s digital transformation is finally arriving. A convergence of technological advancement, geopolitical disruption and regulatory pressure is propelling this centuries-old industry toward modernization. This is creating opportunities for investors – particularly in Europe – to accelerate change, private equity experts told PE Hub.
Maritime is a large, global sector – 80 percent of global trade moves by sea, Jerome Hershey, principal at FTV Capital, told PE Hub. “Most goods we use daily are likely to traverse across some marine landscape. It’s an enormous category undergoing broad trends around digitization.”
FTV identified maritime’s potential a decade ago. “We saw maritime as ready for thematic shifts from offline to online, digitizing workflows and manual processes ripe for automation. That’s been a prominent theme.”
Global geopolitical uncertainty has amplified the sector’s dynamism, Hershey said. “In the last two years, over 20 major labor disruptions hit European and US ports. Q2 saw the most sanctioned vessels since 2022 and over 13,000 vessels were impacted by GPS jamming and spoofing. Also, US-China tariffs fluctuated six times in the last five years.”
These factors, Hershey added, are creating huge opportunities for tech and data companies like Windward to solve maritime challenges. In March, San Francisco-based FTV backed that thesis with the acquisition of Windward, a maritime AI company based in London.
The global maritime sector has attracted “significant” PE money, with many of the largest private companies now PE-owned, Hershey said. “There’s also a big M&A opportunity in the sector, where smaller product companies – generating €5 million-€10 million in revenue – serve as interesting pieces of broader end-to-end platforms.”
Windward is exploring bolt-on acquisitions and it’s not alone. European companies like Kpler, Veson and Pole Star have already made deals, he said. “That set up a large growing market with a plethora of inorganic opportunities that caters well to the large-cap and mid-market private equity world.”
Europe is a focal point for this investment wave as it sits between the US and Asia and is the global shipping center, he added. “The maritime ecosystem has proven to be attractive to large European funds.”
Reshoring as regionalization
As the sector grapples with disruptions and opportunities, the ripple effects are felt most acutely in global supply chains, where shifts in trade patterns create challenges and opportunities.
Where some see reshoring as deglobalization, GTCR sees it as regionalization of supply chains with new corridors and trade routes, Ashwin Krishnan, principal at GTCR, told PE Hub.
“With more alternatives there is more supply chain complexity that you must manage. Software and data solutions can help with supply chain optimization and visibility,” themes increasingly valuable in a fragmented and complicated supply chain, Krishnan said.
FTV’s Hershey agreed that reshoring is reshaping the maritime ecosystem. “Things that were once cross-border are now becoming captive to domestic supply chains that create changes in data, changes in workflow and changes in supply or risk.”
The firm sees cross-border maritime players repurposing their value proposition to help companies understand the implications of migrating their supply chain from across borders or domestically, Hershey said.
“There are challenges when changing origination or port of call. You still need to figure out how to move goods domestically and the supply chain implications of doing that.” There are a subset of companies helping customers figure out the implications of changing the supply chain dynamics, he said.
Windward helps government and commercial customers understand the implications of tariffs, which creates opportunities for vendors to help customers understand how shifting supply chains – say from China to Vietnam – ripple through economically and operationally, Hershey said.
Digital tide
Supply chain shifts are just one piece of the puzzle. Connectivity is also redefining what’s possible at sea, Krishnan said. “Over the past decade, the cost of internet access from ship-to-shore has reduced by over 90 percent while the speed has increased 100x, thanks to technologies like LEO and Starlink.”
The industry is now truly coming online, with connectivity that can support modern software and data applications, he noted.
But technology alone didn’t flip the switch. Ships have long lifespans, meaning retrofitting vessels with new technology requires capex with high ROI, Krishnan said. That takes time, as the newly built ships must gradually enter the fleet, he said.
Coupled with decarbonization and regulations, ship owners and operators must invest in technology to remain compliant and competitive, he said. EU Emissions Trading System and FuelEU Maritime rules require precise tracking of emissions and fuel use, driving demand for integrated monitoring and optimization software.
Hence, there is a lot of tech adoption and increased investments from PE and venture capital, Krishnan said.
Voyage planning
To capture those trends, GTCR launched Maris Investments in June, aiming to consolidate companies in global maritime tech under a unified platform led by industry veteran Manish Singh. Many targets are in Europe or Asia, so GTCR’s initial focus for Maris will be Europe, Krishnan said.
Maritime is a natural extension of GTCR’s transportation technology and broadband connectivity expertise, Mark Anderson, a partner in the TMT practice at GTCR, told PE Hub. Singh aims to integrate point solutions into a “comprehensive maritime tech platform that ties together multiple different products and solves different pain points,” Anderson said.
Maritime in Europe is highly fragmented – a patchwork of small companies that have been doing business face-to-face for centuries, Krishnan said. “For us, the goal is to find the right pieces that fit logically from a platform perspective.”
Consider voyage planning, for instance. On ships, there are specific certifications tied to the crew’s roles and ports, Anderson said. Many of these can expire mid-voyage. “Today, this is tracked manually. There’s clear potential to digitize these paper-based processes and GTCR is exploring use cases like that.”
An example is Bridgepoint acquiring a stake in Surikat, a Gothenburg, Sweden-based provider of software for land-based and maritime logistics, in December.
Editor’s note: Bridgepoint owns PEI Group, the publisher of PE Hub.
Krishnan sees three key segments emerging for platform plays. The first is fleet operations, including voyage planning, performance optimization and vessel maintenance software. The second is maritime intelligence, combining data and analytics for supply chain visibility, security and trade analytics.
The third is administration and compliance, where regulation drives demand for digital tools. “It’s less trying to figure out how to go laterally across the map and more about looking at the sub-segments of maritime pain points and building a platform that addresses that, which should be relevant globally.”
Data rush
Beyond software, data has become maritime’s most valuable currency. FTV’s Hershey emphasized that companies with proprietary data or platforms that can synthesize, aggregate and clean third-party and customer data is an interesting place to play.
“There’s a big convergence between the maritime tech vendor ecosystem and broader supply chain management, helping vessel owners understand the financial and operational implications of delays,” he said.
Deals are following that logic. In May, Verdane agreed to sell Danelec, a Danish provider of advanced digital products for maritime data collection and analysis designed to enhance operational performance, safety and decarbonization, to GTT Group at a €194 million valuation.
AI is another trend, especially the use of agentic AI to automate and streamline cumbersome operational workflows across trading and shipping companies, Hershey said. Veza and Marcura are leveraging maritime-oriented LLMs to extract data and draft emails, streamlining tasks that once consumed hours of manual labor, he said.
Risk management and compliance is another frontier, Hershey said. “There’s border intelligence use cases, sanctions implications and threats around charting and voyage management. Some players play a role in that: selecting the right ship and ensuring safe, efficient passage from port to port.”
Navigating challenges
Despite the surge in investment, Hershey cautioned that the landscape is becoming more competitive, with strong investor interest and numerous private companies.
“Macroeconomic uncertainty adds both opportunity and risk – predicting impacts from tariffs or shifting government budgets is tricky, given government budgets are not reflective of the value proposition of the customer, but some idiosyncratic resolution that passes.”
Ongoing conflict in the Middle East and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine inject further volatility, he said. “These factors are both catalysts and opportunities, but they also insert unpredictability and volatility in the landscape.”
The best companies will be able to harness that and use it as an opportunity more so than a risk, but doing so is tricky, Hershey added.
Even so, capital keeps flowing. Earlier this month, KKR unveiled a new container leasing platform called Galaxy Container Solutions, backed by $500 million in committed capital – proof that investors see value not only in software and data plays, but also in the physical infra that underpins maritime logistics.
For FTV and GTCR, the long-term bet is clear. Maritime is too large, too vital and too far behind to remain analog. The question isn’t whether maritime will digitize – it’s which companies and investors will lead the transformation.
