By Katie Liu | Aug. 14, 2026
ChargeUp company uses novel technology to push boats out of water, increasing efficiency and reducing pollution
High-speed vessels that can soar above water, like flying EVs, might sound like the work of science fiction. But this is a reality at Artemis Technologies, a company specializing in electrifying high-power commercial boats and propelling them above the ocean surface in order to revolutionize and clean up maritime transport.
Artemis Technologies, which launched the world’s first commercially coded electric foiling vessel in 2022, has since deployed these vessels around the world, from Spain and Belgium to the U.S. and Canada. Its pilot boats are soon to be swimming in the ports of Abu Dhabi, the Swedish Maritime Authority, and the Port of Tyne in the U.K.
Artemis’ novel “eFoiler” electric propulsion systems are what makes this possible: These systems can eliminate the vessel’s operational emissions, all while preserving shorelines and marine life.
“Artemis is the Greek goddess who is a protector of nature,” said David Tyler, co-founder of the company and managing director of its North America office. “It naturally fits with our mission to decarbonize maritime transport.”
Artemis Technologies is one of nine companies participating in ChargeUp Accelerator, which is the only U.S. accelerator program to focus exclusively on supporting battery and energy storage startups. ChargeUp is hosted in Binghamton University’s Koffman Southern Tier Incubator, and runs under the New Energy New York coalition, led by the same university.
Decarbonizing maritime industries
When pinpointing the world’s biggest drivers of greenhouse gases, one might think of aviation polluting the skies or cars clogging up the road. The maritime industry, however, is responsible for more than 1 billion tons of carbon emissions a year — comprising approximately 3% of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, according to ClimateWorks Foundation. This also includes nitrogen and sulfur oxide emissions, which contribute to smog. Beyond these gases, ships powered by noisy diesel engines also threaten marine habitats.
As we grow ever more connected, by both skies and seas, finding ways to reduce our marine footprint is becoming an essential part of the race to decarbonize energy.
The idea for Artemis Technologies, however, had its roots in sports. Though the company was formally established in 2017, its founding team originally took part in the 34th America’s Cup Challenge, racing in the bays off San Francisco as part of the Artemis Racing team in 2013.
Between training in San Francisco or the waters of Bermuda, working on catamarans that could speed at 60 miles an hour across the water and four times the speed of the wind, the team saw the necessity to fundamentally revamp how their boats operated.
“There’d be a few of us in the support vessels or the chase boats behind, getting bashed around in the waves, guzzling lots of diesel,” Tyler said. “We’d come in feeling very broken and bad about the polluting effect of the vessel we’d been operating all day.”
The issue is it takes a lot more energy to move through water than it does air, thus creating a lot more pollution and resulting particulates and artifacts. Simply fitting current vessel designs with new batteries won’t offer ships the capacity or efficiency they need to be useful.
This is where Artemis’ patented eFoiler technology comes in. A boat’s foil is comparable to the wing of a plane, according to Tyler. As water courses over this “wing” in time with the vessel’s acceleration, it can generate enough lift to push it out of the water. Getting the hull of the ship out of the water, in turn, drastically reduces drag, enabling it to “fly” above the surface.
“It was really obvious that this huge jump in technology and innovation could have a significant impact in supporting the decarbonization of boats, whether it be passenger ferries, pilot boats operating on ports, crew transfer vessels for offshore energy, search and rescue, and of course, recreation too,” Tyler said. “It’s an unlocker for enabling vessels to deliver viable ranges for commercial operation.”
While electric foiling craft are not necessarily new, many companies have focused primarily on leisure applications or smaller passenger vessels. Artemis Technologies, on the other hand, concentrates on some of the maritime sector’s most demanding commercial applications, including pilot boats, passenger ferries, offshore crew transfer vessels, and workboats — sectors which have been traditionally difficult to electrify, as they require both high speed and practical operating range. This makes hydrofoil technology a critical enabler for wider commercial adoption.
Electrifying boats
The foil of the boat is just one component of the Artemis eFoiler. The company’s technology also integrates its hydrofoils with a built-in electric drive unit as well as an autonomous flight control system, Tyler explained. Electric motors and propellers, powered by this electric drive unit, boost the boat until it reaches the speed where it gradually soars out of the water.
By then, a control system kicks in to automate the height at which the boat hovers, allowing it to either continue floating or eventually decelerate.
“Using these foils to fly the boat out of the water, we’re using between 70 to 90% less energy, compared with conventional fast vessels of similar size and duty cycle,” Tyler added. “That means we can go significantly further and faster with the same sort of installed energy.”
Sensors enable the boat to fly above the waves automatically, while lithium-ion batteries designed specifically for the eFoiler deliver lightweight, long-range power. Conventional batteries on boats have required air-cooling in an entire battery room, making it difficult to make any tweaks to the batteries without having to shut down the entire room. By contrast, Artemis Technologies’ batteries are scalable and modular, allowing problems to be isolated down to a singular battery rather than an entire room.
These batteries had to pass highly stringent criteria and tests for approval, which ranged from submerging the batteries in water to successfully passing thermal runaway propagation tests.
“In a car, if you have an issue with the battery, you get out of the car and you walk away. With a boat, you don’t necessarily have that opportunity,” Tyler said. “The rules are around preventing or delaying a thermal runaway event within the battery itself. So we developed a special system to support and meet and exceed those requirements.”
The result of these efforts is a ship that could conceivably do it all: it will eliminate pollution in skies and seas and sound; it will not carve disruptive wakes into the water; it will protect native wildlife, shorelines, and habitats; and it will even make for a much smoother, far less sea-sickening ride. All at a fraction of the fuel cost.
So far, Artemis’ technology is available in two differently sized platforms, the 12-meter mono-hull platform and the 24-meter catamaran. Tyler adds that those boats can typically operate at a cruise speed of 25 to 35 knots, at a range of 40-50 nautical miles, depending on the platform and specification.
As it continues to deploy around the world, the company’s next target is to begin manufacturing its vessels in the U.S., aiming for deployment in 2027.
“I’d love to see our electric ferries foiling around all the major coastal cities in the world, whether it be New York or San Francisco, Sydney Harbor or Dubai,” Tyler said. “The maritime sector is a significant contributor to carbon and more harmful gaseous emissions, and it’d be amazing if we can play a significant part in reducing those emissions, to make the planet a greener and better place.”
Continuing historical legacies
Artemis Technologies found its home in the shipyards of Belfast, home of both the famous and infamous, from the White Star Line to the Titanic. Tyler sees Artemis as the next node in a long and storied history of maritime transport and transformation.
“It’s great for us to actually bring shipbuilding back to Belfast,” he said. “It has a great history, and hopefully, with our technology, it’s going to have a great future.”
With an office in Brooklyn, N.Y., Artemis Technologies has found ChargeUp Accelerator’s programming beneficial for introducing its team to industry veterans and investors, particularly those who are already practiced in developing deep tech and hardware.
This process is usually a lengthy and costly one, Tyler added, and developing a better understanding of the battery manufacturing landscape in the U.S. will be significant for Artemis Technologies as it begins expanding.
“As we start to establish ourselves in the U.S., we’re looking at opportunities to grow our manufacturing capability in the U.S.,” Tyler said. “Being part of this accelerator program, having access to the visibility the program brings — to potential new investors, new partners, and new manufacturers — it felt like it was really going to help us move forward, particularly with our plans here in the U.S.”
Tyler has juggled law in university then sports marketing as a career. In 2009, he established his own sports management company, where he represented athletes from all over, including Olympic champion Iain Percy — who later joined the America’s Cup Challenge as a racer, bringing Tyler along to San Francisco.
Though he did not grow up sailing competitively, Tyler did always possess a fascination for the great outdoors. He watched David Attenborough often — whose voice you may remember narrating multitudes of documentaries celebrating our planet — and he is also a qualified scuba diver.
Whether he is diving beneath the ocean surface or snorkeling up top, Tyler is endlessly amazed by the sea. Buoyed by the salt, and surrounded on all sides by endless blues, creatures, and coral, he said that diving can expose you to entirely different planes of existence.
“Scuba diving gives you an opportunity to view a new world, the world under the water,” he said. “It’s something that isn’t visible just looking down into the water. It gives you this opportunity to explore nature under the sea. Just that sensation of floating, and weightlessness, is quite an amazing feeling — just drifting around and exploring and seeing things you wouldn’t see any other day.”
It’s this love for the sea that urges Tyler to do his part in protecting it.
“Climate change is happening. You see it around us every day. It’s really important that we work hard to address that challenge and leave a better place for our children, and the people that follow behind,” he said.
To have a hand in accomplishing that, while also manning the helm of his own dreams and destiny, Tyler added, is well worth the sweat and strife of entrepreneurship.
“We’re really driving the transformation of a sector in an industry,” he said. “It really motivates me every day.”