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

By Ami Daniel, Co-Founder & CEO, Windward

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. 

What matters is that this has created a new phenomenon of the “Dark Fleet”. The world went from a few hundred dark tankers to roughly 2,000. In a single week in October, UKMTO recorded 12 attacks on commercial ships around Hormuz alone. The seas have become a de facto battleground. 

In parallel, we’ve seen more reports than ever of drones suspected of being launched from commercial vessels over Germany, and of subsea cables cut in the Baltic by the Eagle S for example.  Shipping isn’t meant to be this. It’s meant to be simple transportation: the bedrock of a global, scalable economy that manufactures in Asia and imports into the EU, the US and the rest of the world. 

As we’ve seen all of this unfold, it was clear the industry needs another scalable layer. Satellites are great, and companies like HawkEye 360, Unseenlabs, ICEYE, Planet, Satellogic, Vantor and others are making a huge impact. Vantor recently described getting imagery to Ukrainian front-line troops in as little as 15 minutes (!). 

However, satellites are expensive to build, launch and operate. Even with SpaceX cutting launch costs dramatically, that cost still flows down to users in an expensive way. 

Satellites also give a momentary, overhead view of the ocean. A camera on the horizon sees a ship very differently: the name, the flag, the draft, the cargo gear, the condition of the hull — continuously, not once a day. 

Two of our values at Windward are leadership and partnership. We see ourselves as a company with agency and responsibility. Not a neutral player floating in space. We care about the safety and security of the oceans. This is why we felt we needed to do something. 

Maritime Visual Intelligence is the future of maritime domain awareness. 

The ability to identify and fingerprint ships from coastal or shipborne cameras at scale is a gamechanger, especially when combined natively with Windward data, activities, risk models and agents. This is what Azimut.ai has been building since 2020, and I’m proud to announce that Azimut is joining Windward. The Azimut team is led by Matan Saat, Shay Lavi, Tomer Marom and Yuval Kassif. And they’ve done a fantastic job. 

If you’re a shipowner or bunkering company, visual verification cuts false positives and sharpens the risk scores behind your compliance decisions. If you operate fishing or commercial vessels in dangerous waters, it gives you real-time alerts on security threats and a clearer picture of who is operating around you. If you’re a port operator, it will give you unmatched accuracy and analytics in assessing trading in and around your port. If you’re a port agent, you can use this to provide better service to your customers by knowing exactly when they berth, when they anchor and when the tugs are ready. If you’re a coast guard or a navy wanting to protect critical underwater infrastructure, this is a scalable, proven way which is cost effective and proven. 

Finally, shipping is global. So just placing sensors in your backyard isn’t going to solve the problem.

Just like today’s AIS networks, we need to be able to understand the history and context of the ship, the cargo, and the voyage. Does this ship coming to the US have a smuggling history in the Gulf? Did this vessel transiting the Baltic look the same last time or has it changed its color and flag? That’s why together with Windward’s proprietary and scalable data, Maritime Visual Intelligence is a great addition to our operational, shareable maritime domain awareness picture.

One last point: if you care, you can make a difference. 

Hormuz woke the world up to how critical shipping is to our livelihoods. If you care about safety at sea, the dark fleet, oil spills or illegal fishing — and especially if you own a seaside hotel, a port facility or a vessel that roams the oceans — become a site partner. 

The system delivers vessel analytics only: no raw images or video, and it’s not used to identify people. Water covers 71% of the Earth’s surface. We can’t watch it alone. Together we are stronger. Reach out here.