ShipIn Systems has become a Public Benefit Corporation, making it the first maritime technology company, according to the company, to formally place safety, crew wellbeing and operational resilience within its corporate purpose. The move gives shipowners another example of how technology providers are tying their business models to the operational outcomes their systems are designed to support.
ShipIn Systems will operate as ShipIn Systems, PBC after its board unanimously approved the change, which places the company’s stated public benefit purpose into its charter.
The company’s charter now commits it to enhancing “safety, wellbeing, and operational resilience across the global maritime industry through responsible, transparent, and intelligent technologies that protect crew, vessels, and cargo.”
The change has implications for how the technology company approaches growth. As a Public Benefit Corporation, ShipIn’s board must consider its stated public benefit alongside economic interests when making corporate decisions. ShipIn will also report annually on its performance against that purpose.
That framework is particularly relevant to shipowners using digital systems to manage vessels and crews. ShipIn says its platform is used by more than 90 shipowners across 1,300 vessels and has analysed more than 2.5 billion hours of vessel operations.
“We are seafarers building AI tools for seafarers,” said Osher Perry, Founder and CEO of ShipIn Systems, PBC. “Our mission has always been bigger than building a successful technology company. It is about helping the people who go to sea come home safely, while helping the fleets they operate become safer and more productive.”
Perry said the board’s decision makes that mission part of the company’s structure as it grows.
The corporate change follows ShipIn’s announcement of a $52 million Series B financing, which the company said would support the global expansion of its AI-powered operational intelligence platform.
The significance of the PBC model sits in the governance behind the technology. ShipIn is putting safety and operational resilience into the same corporate framework that governs its commercial growth, creating a formal obligation to consider the impact its technology has on the people and fleets using it.
