Above Board: Photon Marine

Dear Friends,

We’re thrilled to start sharing our progress with a broader community and are grateful to all of you who are eager to keep tabs on what we’re up to.

🏁 2025 is off to a fast start. While there are always a few storms on the horizon, we’re navigating through with steady progress—ramping up production, delivering to our first customers, executing on grants, and in the midst off our Series A raise.

Here are two invites and few updates 📮:

Sea Trials & Events 🛥️

🎤 We’ve been behind the mic at multiple events already this year with our new Senior Sales Manager Chad White on the panel at February’s National Working Waterfront Conference in San Diego while our CEO Marcelino spoke at the IMPACT Travel & Tourism Conference up in Victoria, B.C. in January. Our CTO Nick attended the Miami International Boat Show last month too to meet with suppliers and key partners. Up next, our Senior Project Manager Leon Wolf will be speaking at the Pacific Coast Congress of Harbor & Port Master’s Conference in April.

THIS MONTH: We have the 24’ Silverback Intrepid in North Portland at our new facility and we’re hosting locals to get out on the water 📅 for the rest of March. 

NEXT MONTH: We’re bringing the 24’ Silverback Intrepid to New York City for sea trials with investors, partners, customers, and friends. 📅 April 8th-10th

For any Sea Trial, we can host up to four guests per trip. If you’re interested in getting out on the water in either Portland or New York, please email us HERE and we’ll send you a link to book. We’d love to share some time on the water with you.

Product Updates ⚙️

The team has been clocking hours on the boat and moving shop!

🌊 Since NOLA: We’ve hosted nearly 90 sea trials, covering over 500 nautical miles across four states
🛠️ Captain Jake, Quentin, and Sawyer are optimizing prop efficiency with daily on-water performance testing
🔩 Insights from our Gen 6 prototype have led to a leaner, production-ready Gen 7 design that overhauls much of the look of the P300 outboard while simplifying the design and reducing costs.
📫 Sizing up to give room to grow: As we mentioned, we’ve moved to a 12,000 sq ft shop in St. Johns. A kind of foresight that would make our moms proud.

Customer Updates 📦

Our first five customer deliveries are great example of our pipeline and a testament to the broad range of applications EV has in commercial boating:

🚢 New York Power Authority: Taking delivery of a 24’ Silverback Grizzly with twin motors this April in upstate New York.
🦪 ABCO Workboat for Nova Scotia Oyster Co. will be delivered in Q2.
🛳️ WSDOT grant – Multiple vessels planned for the Port of Friday Harbor
⛴️ Water taxi RFP – Promising opportunity in the Northeast US
🌊 Seattle nonprofit – Grant-funded project to electrify an observation & monitoring vessel

We are also in early-stage discussions with several customers for large (10-100 system) orders, validating our commercial fleet GTM strategy.

In Other News:

🐻 California is leading the charge with their Clean Off-Road Equipment (CORE) Voucher program that is making it more affordable for commercial operators to electrify their vessels.

With this program, the cost difference between a traditional ICE motor and an EV system is covered by the grant with an additional $100,000 in funds to support infrastructure upgrades (!!!). While we’re projecting an ROI for standard EV customers of only a few years, this program creates cost parity out of the gate and is a win for everyone in the industry.

Gratitude🙏

We wanted to express our thanks specifically to a number of folks who’ve really stepped up for us recently:

🧪 Newlab, their Brooklyn team as welcomed us with open arms as we collaborate on hosting Sea Trials in New York near their Brooklyn hub.

📹 Justin Dalinger from Aqua Lectric spent a few hours with us on the water in Portland putting together a thoughtful review of our electric workboat.

🎤 Marco Pimentel of Someone Like You, a podcast on sustainable businesses interviewed CEO Marcelino and our new Director of Operations Alana Kambury for an upcoming episode (stay tuned)

It goes without saying that we’re grateful you’re all apart of our journey. Together, we’re more than making waves—we’re transforming the marine industry.

It’s Always Sunny in Portland

[On an electric boat 😉] Despite some geopolitical risks, we see the opportunity for marine decarbonization increasing, not just in the US, but in Canada, South America, Asia, and Europe. The current dialogue is a helpful reminder as we continue to diversify our customer portfolio, balancing the combination of market interest with an appetite for risk.

More updates soon - in the meantime, we hope to see you out on the water!

– Team Photon

_{Postscript: Discoveries and Delights that we think are worth sharing. ☀️}

• We know we’ve only scratched the surface of how we use AI at Photon, so we appreciate The Rundown’s daily education on the tools and the industry in bite size amounts.

• Did you know they’ve been sinking old railcars in oceans to restore degraded reefs, and it’s been working?

• There’s a lot going on in the news. We recommend subscribing to Semi-Rad’s weekly digest for a dose of humor and adventure-motivation.

• _{Our original Whit Hassett video is always worth sharing ⤵️}