Welcome Azimut.ai: Why Maritime Visual Intelligence Is the Future of Maritime Domain Awareness

I’ve been doing “ships” for 24 years now (almost 25!). The first days of AIS were exciting. You could finally see ships at scale. We were among the first customers of exactEarth satellite AIS (now part of Kpler, via Spire) and of Orbcomm AIS (now part of S&P Global). However, two big changes happened recently, and both require a new way to think about maritime domain awareness:

1. Shipping went dark: Between the Russian dark fleet, the 2026 Iran war (where AIS-visible transits fell 83% from the pre-conflict baseline), the Ukraine-Russia war, and the attacks on ships in the Black Sea, the same technology you were supposed to turn on for safety at sea, AIS, now requires you to turn it off for safety at sea.

2. Agentic AI: data is the new oil. More than ever, organizations want to (and can) build their own in-house data lakes, repositories and platforms. They want high-quality, proprietary data. Not another dashboard.

In my conversations with P&I clubs, shipowners, traders and government officials, many are worried about how quickly shipping is splitting into two systems. P&I insurance, classification for ships, and flag authorities, were all built so that disasters like the Exxon Valdez never happen again. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, sanctions have become a weapon. Whether that is justified is a separate debate.

This story was originally published by Hellenic Shipping News. Read the full story at Hellenic Shipping News →