—— Our mission

We grew up on docks and
shipping desks. PortWave is the
platform we always wished we had.

Helping maritime teams turn the deluge into decisions.

Rotterdam · 1998 · Founder's first port call
—— Our story

Built by operators,
not by marketers.

Our founders met on a Rotterdam port call in the late 90s. One was running the agency desk. The other was a junior bunker trader on his second week. Twenty years and a few thousand port calls later, they kept watching the same thing happen: brilliant operators losing entire days to data entry, missing windows because the right signal arrived too late.

In 2023, two things lined up. AI got good enough to read a SOF. And the maritime data layer — AIS, port systems, bunker pricing — finally had APIs you could trust. PortWave is what happens when you put those two things together.

We're a maritime company that does AI. Not the other way around.

—— How we work

Four principles, pinned
above every desk.

Ship with operators

Every feature is reviewed by an active shipping agent or bunker trader before it ships. If they can't use it on a busy Friday, it doesn't ship.

AI cites its sources

Every AI output in PortWave links to the source document or data point that drove it. No hallucinations. No black boxes.

🌊

Maritime literacy first

Our support team are ex-maritime. Our models are trained on maritime documents. We speak the language because we grew up in it.

🌅

Earn it every morning

We run a lean, operator-first company. No bloat. No slide decks in place of product. Every morning we earn the right to call ourselves the best tool in the port.

42
people
18
nationalities
312
ports
$28M
Series B
—— The team

Built by people who have
been on the dock.

Founders
[ A.V ]
[ A.V ]
CEO & Co-founder
20+ years shipping agency, Rotterdam & Hamburg
[ M.K ]
[ M.K ]
CTO & Co-founder
ML engineer · prev. applied AI at two maritime data cos.
[ J.H ]
[ J.H ]
COO & Co-founder
15+ years bunker trading, Singapore & Fujairah
Leadership
[ S.R ]
[ S.R ]
VP Engineering
[ L.B ]
[ L.B ]
VP Sales
[ P.N ]
[ P.N ]
Head of Maritime
[ K.T ]
[ K.T ]
Head of Design
[ R.M ]
[ R.M ]
Head of Data
[ Y.L ]
[ Y.L ]
Head of Customer Success
[ D.F ]
[ D.F ]
Head of Finance
[ A.O ]
[ A.O ]
Head of People
—— Backed by

Investors who understand maritime.

[ Lead Investor ]Series B · $28M
[ Early Investor A ]Seed · $3.2M
[ Early Investor B ]Series A · $12M
[ Strategic Investor ]Series B participant
—— Advisors

Practitioners, not pundits.

A.
[ A.P ]
Former CEO · Major port
T.
[ T.K ]
Chief Digital, maritime carrier
S.
[ S.W ]
Founder, shipping tech
M.
[ M.A ]
Head of Trading, oil major
L.
[ L.R ]
Maritime AI researcher
F.
[ F.B ]
Regulatory, IMO advisor
D.
[ D.V ]
CTO, port authority
H.
[ H.C ]
Ex-Lloyd's, risk & compliance
—— We're hiring

Come build the future of maritime ops.

42 people so far. We're looking for operators who want to build, engineers who understand domain, and go-to-market people who have been on the dock.

See open roles
Senior ML Engineer — Maritime NLP
Engineering · Rotterdam / Remote
Enterprise Account Executive
Sales · Singapore
Maritime Solutions Engineer
Customer Success · Rotterdam
Senior Product Designer
Design · Amsterdam / Remote
Head of Partnerships
Business Development · London