Rylan Hamilton is Co-Founder and CEO at Blue Water Autonomy, a technology and shipbuilding company developing fully autonomous unmanned ships for the U.S. Navy and commercial maritime applications. The company is building software-defined, modular vessels designed to operate on the open ocean for months at a time.

Rylan served as a U.S. Navy Surface Warfare Officer, piloting ships through the Persian Gulf during Operation Iraqi Freedom and later on a frigate in the Pacific. He earned a B.S. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University and an M.B.A. with distinction from Harvard Business School.

Before Blue Water, Rylan co-founded 6 River Systems in 2015, a warehouse automation company that commercialized collaborative autonomous mobile robots for logistics. He raised $45 million and sold the company to Shopify for $450 million in 2019.

Rylan was an early leader at Amazon Robotics (formerly Kiva Systems), where he deployed thousands of industrial robots to warehouses nationwide. Blue Water Autonomy has raised $64 million total, including a $50 million Series A led by GV in August 2025.

Blue Water Autonomy is building medium-sized autonomous warships from the keel up, designed for speedier production and lower operating costs than traditional crewed vessels. The company plans to deploy its first full-sized autonomous ship in 2026, supporting the Pentagon's $2.1 billion investment in unmanned surface vessels.