Fast-growing Mount Maunganui drone maker Syos already had land, sea and air covered with its lineup of uncrewed vehicles.
Now it can add underwater, too, thanks to its purchase of Bay Dynamics, a Tauranga maker of uncrewed submersibles, for an undisclosed sum.
Bay Dynamics’ founder, sole director and shareholder Matt Mooney is now Syos’ head of subsea vehicle design.
Syos founder, chief executive and majority shareholder Sam Vye told the Herald the motivation for the buyout was twofold: To gain the niche engineering skills of Mooney and his half-dozen staff and the intellectual property for the various craft they’ve designed.
Subsea capability was the only element missing in Syos’ offering for civil and defence customers.
Further acquisitions were possible. “We want to be a global leader,” Vye said.
Mooney’s firm, founded in the Tauranga suburb of Judea in 2017, quickly won a contract to clear a Tauranga City Council output pipe that stretched 1km out to sea.
It constructed a purpose-built, remote-controlled submersible for the job, capable of lifting up to 50kg and equipped with a swappable payload bay for either stereo cameras and lights or sonar for mapping.
Underwater housing was bought offshore, but other components were machined or 3D printed in Tauranga, Mooney said in a council video about the project (below).
Earlier this year, Bay Dynamics said it had been selected by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, from an international pool of tenderers, to build a customised drone system for the Fiji Police Force to fight “marine-based crime”.
Bay Dynamics adapted a submersible from US firm Blue Robotics for the contract.
And in April, Meridian Energy said it was using “BlueROV-C” underwater robots from Bay Dynamics for hydro dam and lake inspections at Lake Benmore.
The submersibles are again a mix of products bought offshore with local parts and customisation.
“We recently developed an oil and gas support unit designed especially for the high-flow waters of the offshore Taranaki region. Another design has been used for the inshore energy civil sector for dams and long-range penstocks [a type of sluice for controlling water flow],” Mooney said.
“We have another design with a defence multi-role capability, which is lined up for Antarctica under ice applications.
“These were designed and built by Bay Dynamics to bring experience and ruggedness to markets that were demanding it but not getting it elsewhere.”
Syos founded in 2021, first drew mainstream attention in April this year when Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s United Kingdom visit was used to announce Syos’ £30 million ($66m) drone deal with the UK Ministry of Defence, which is in turn aiding Ukraine in its fight against Russia – with strong hints that more contracts will follow.
Syos opened a European engineering and production facility at Fareham in the UK in 2024.
The Fareham site employs 50 engineers and can produce 40 state-of-the-art uncrewed subsea vehicles (USVs) a month, the firm says.
Bay Dynamics was founded in 2017 and has been based in Judea, Tauranga.
Vye said all of its small team would shift to Syos’ Mt Maunganui facility.
The site currently employs about 70 people and underwater uncrewed vehicle (UUV) production will be expanded into the UK for the European market.
During a recent behind-the-scenes tour of Syos’ Mt Maunganui facility (see video top of article), Vye said his firm’s points of difference in a crowded field were its fast development and build times, plus its AI-aided software that lets one operator control many drones at once in a coordinated swarm across land, air, sea and now sub-sea.
His firm’s software - dubbed the Augmented Intelligence Mission System - or “Aims”, is hardware-agnostic, Vye said.
That meant it could be immediately used to control Bay Dynamic’s craft (or other drones using standard systems).
Syos planned to triple its Mt Maunganui staff over the next year, Vye said.
Vye said potential applications for Syos air, land, sea and now underwater vehicles are endless, ranging from disaster response to offshore inspections to delivering supplies to ships. (He never addresses it directly, but he could have added that, in Ukraine, his firm’s thumpers can also knock incoming Russian drones out of the sky.)
“We want to remove a pilot or operator from any operation that is dull, dirty, or dangerous – to reduce risk and reduce cost - whether that’s in national security or in civil applications."
Vye told the Herald that he started Syos with seed capital from high-net worth individuals, including Sam Morgan and Kent Baigent, after been spurned by local venture capital funds. The business could fund itself organically and had no plans for a raise.
The NZ Defence Force looked offshore for its first drones, including Australian-made Bluebottle craft for the navy’s first uncrewed small vessels.
But earlier this month, Defence Minister Judith Collins - with Vye on hand - launched a new Defence Industry Strategy.
Associate Minister of Defence Chris Penk said the plan would encourage the NZDF and local innovators to team up in showcasing New Zealand–made equipment and services to partners.
A new four-year Defence Capability plan, announced by Collins on October 3, includes a new Technology Accelerator programme with an “indicative investment of $100m to $300m″.
The fund will see “Defence work with the advanced technology sector on military use technology for the NZDF and with export potential”, Collins said.
Vye was expecting the first Technology Accelerator funding to be allocated from July next year.
Syos and other potential participants are waiting for NZDF to release its first request-for-proposals for the programme - but he was confident at least one of his firm’s R&D projects would fit the bill.
The fast-moving nature of the drone market meant most defence forces framed an RFP in terms of a problem that they need to solve, rather than requesting an unmanned craft built to specific tech specs, Vye said.
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.