How shared design principles and data-driven collaboration are shaping the next wave of maritime innovation.
Innovation in the yachting sector no longer happens behind closed doors. The complexity of today’s vessels — where digital systems, AI, and sustainability converge — requires a shared approach that blends expertise, data, and creative thinking.
That’s why the article “Progettazione Collaborativa: il modello che accelera l’innovazione” is particularly relevant for the maritime and D.gree ecosystem. It highlights how collaborative design, when supported by solid digital infrastructures and real operational data, becomes a strategic engine for faster, more reliable innovation.
As I wrote:
“Collaboration becomes not only a strategic choice, but a prerequisite for collective progress.”
This is especially true at sea, where success depends on the synergy between shipyards, engineers, and technology partners.
Through this perspective, D.gree emerges as more than a platform — it’s a shared architecture that transforms data into common value, bridging the gap between design and operation, between human expertise and machine intelligence.
“The D.gree project represents the concretization of this philosophy — a living system where experience, data, and AI evolve together.”
That sentence captures the essence of what makes the project unique: a technological environment designed not to compete, but to connect — aligning with SailADV’s vision of an open, cooperative innovation model for the entire yachting industry.
Among all the possible settings to discuss innovation, the traditional Conero Regatta might not be the first that comes to mind. Yet this year, it became an unexpected stage — one that sparked great curiosity and engagement.
This is the story of how the event unfolded, with SailADV leading the conversation on the future of smart yachts.
It all began with Giovanni Palamà, a sailing veteran, who opened a lively discussion on how technology and data are transforming the world of yachting. Few examples, but powerful ones — clear and effective metaphors. Like that of a labyrinth: when you don’t know which direction to take, you need a compass. And data, when properly interpreted, clearly show the way forward.
That image perfectly captures the essence of what SailADV is building through D.gree and its network of brands. D.gree collects and processes data, and through its AI-first deterministic platform, creates meaningful connections between users, allowing them to access and interpret information in a truly useful and transparent way.
Data remained at the heart of the entire conference, which later featured Leandro Agrò, Chief Product Officer, joining live from Palo Alto — the place where innovation often happens first. Agrò took the audience on a fascinating journey through the world of artificial intelligence, exploring what’s already possible today and what’s yet to come. With his human-centric vision, he showed how AI can make yachting smarter, more sustainable, and more connected.
Captains, Shipyards, Scientists in the Audience
The audience — a diverse mix of captains, shipyard representatives, and researchers — followed with keen interest, eager to understand the scope and impact of the D.gree Project and the broader wave of innovation sweeping the industry.
The presentation by General Manager Attilio Mucelli helped “dot the i’s”: Italy today stands as the world’s leading yacht manufacturer. The data prove it — but they also reveal a deeper transformation: the age and expectations of yacht owners are changing, and with them, the entire market.
Being ready — with cutting-edge products that deliver the highest possible experience — is the real challenge for shipyards. Safety, performance, and above all, prediction are now the cornerstones of innovation.
Safety and Prediction: Charting the Course Ahead
Safety and predictive capability go hand in hand. Today, no action at sea can be taken without considering both. As explained by Professor Roberto Pierdicca from the Polytechnic University of Marche, geospatial data play a pivotal role in this transformation — connecting digital intelligence with the physical world, from shipyards to open waters.
To conclude: Giovanni Palamà, founder and experienced sailor, shared his vision in a short video with its own perspective.
As the yachting world faces its perfect storm, Wired tells the story of Giovanni Palamà — the sailor-engineer behind SailADV and D.gree — where maritime heritage meets Silicon Valley intelligence.
The yachting industry is sailing through a perfect storm — a convergence of new owners, rising complexity, and the arrival of AI at sea. It’s no coincidence that Wired chose to tell this story through Giovanni Palamà, the sailor-engineer behind SailADV and the mind from which D.gree was born. Few embody this transformation better: a life spent between engines, sensors, and shipyards, turning real-world experience into data — and data into intelligence.
Because the future of yachting won’t come from code alone. It will come from people of the sea who learn to speak the language of algorithms, and from engineers who learn to listen like captains. That’s what happens when Mediterranean precision meets Silicon Valley’s velocity — when the discipline of sea trials merges with design thinking and AI edge computing. D.gree stands exactly there: born at sea, designed in Palo Alto — building the new intelligence of yachting.
Article Preview: “We have built a monitoring system that can be likened to a Holter device… it remains installed onboard and is able to collect data to understand how the vessel is actually used.”(Giovanni Palamà) WIRED Article: L’intelligenza artificiale arriva anche sui super yacht
From anchoring medusas to docking drones, proactive intelligence is reshaping life on board — Star Trek–grade technology for yacht captains and shipyards.
Intro A friend at NASA, David Mauro, once told me that all human artifacts ultimately fall into two categories: those that fly, and those that don’t.
As a kid, I drew starship cockpits. I grew up with science fiction, trained to think in terms of systems before objects. So when I found myself designing the IoT for yachts, I realized: this is the closest thing to those imagined starships — the most ambitious challenge in an artifact that doesn’t fly.
When I encountered yachting a year ago, I saw the paradox: Italy leads the world in building these masterpieces, but the industry still speaks a pre-digital dialect, inadequate for the complexity of today’s yachts.
The Perfect Storm
The yachting industry is entering a perfect storm — three converging forces that no longer arrive one after another, but all at once. What was once tradition and incremental refinement is now being reshaped by systemic pressure.
The first force is Generational. A new wave of owners who made their wealth scaling fintech unicorns or blockchain platforms. They’re fluent in tech, intelligent systems, and expect the same at sea. Owners who can’t accept that their 60-meter yachts won’t show energy use and route data on an iPad with the precision he applies to track fintech investments, or that he can’t access cabins as seamlessly as he unlocks his car or manages his smart home. Crude interfaces and opaque systems are no longer tolerated. And dressing up a vessel with a Christmas tree of gadgets won’t fix it.
The second is technical. Shipyards have become orchestrators of a growing network of subcontractors, suppliers, and technology providers — but the system is reaching a breaking point. This is no longer about choosing a sofa or wiring a slightly more complex electrical plant. It’s about hybrid propulsion, distributed energy systems, intelligent stabilizers, advanced navigation layers. Relying only on the captain’s experience and hoping for the best is no longer sustainable. Captains must be empowered with new superpowers, not crushed under a heavier load of tasks. A shipyard that weakens its captains risks undermining its own market power. One that strengthens them gains loyalty and long-term leadership.
The third force, the most disruptive of all, is artificial intelligence. Other industries were reshaped by external shocks — electrification flipped the automotive sector, turning Tesla into a myth while legacy brands stumbled. In yachting, the external shock is even bigger: AI redefines everything. But here lies both the challenge and the opportunity. The AI industry has no real maritime experience, and scraping YouTube or AIS feeds won’t solve that gap. Shipyards, instead, hold a unique asset: decades of tacit, non-digitized knowledge and a growing mountain of data gathered at sea. That combination can turn disruption into dominance.
Yachting is a powerful niche: market surpassed USD 10.7 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow at 6% CAGR through 2032, driven by rising ultra-high-net-worth individuals (Global Market Insights, 2024), demanding even larger superyachts (100meters, four decks, or more)
Consider the scale: Italy alone accounts for nearly 50% of the global superyacht market, with 11 of the world’s top 20 builders headquartered there. This isn’t just craftsmanship — it’s global leadership.
And this is exactly why it makes sense that the AI of the seas is born in Italy. It isn’t about chasing foundation models or building another GenAI from scratch. It’s about translating the unmatched expertise of Italian shipyards into digital form — and combining it with years of real-world data collected at sea, refined into a deterministic, maritime-grade intelligence.
This is the perfect storm: three waves colliding at once. It’s no longer a matter of whether to innovate. It’s a matter of survival — and the greatest opportunity this industry has ever had.
Intelligent Nodes and the AI of the Sea
From this systemic pressure, the question becomes: where do we start? The answer is already on board. Years of data collected at sea, distilled into deterministic intelligence, now embodied in D.gree and its Intelligent Nodes.
For years, on dozens of yachts, it has been collecting and processing thousands of datapoints every five seconds — navigation, performance, onboard systems. This is a deterministic AI, built on machine learning, that learns from the sea. Unlike generic AI prone to hallucinations, this is deterministic — designed for reliability at sea: This is the AI born and emerged by the Sea.
How does it work? Think Star Trek: Kirk at the helm, Scotty with engines and reactors. D.gree lives in the engine room, talks to every system on board, and emerges on the bridge — at the captain’s side.
Now add Intelligent Nodes: compact, rugged units bringing real-time edge computing to the ocean. They don’t just log data. They analyze anchor behavior, hull vibrations, propulsion anomalies — turning raw signals into actionable insight on the spot. They run offline, filter noise, reduce cloud traffic, and integrate cyber-resilience.
At the core: Nvidia Jetson Orin, the most advanced edge AI platform available today: born for next-gen robotics and edge solutions. Each node embeds an Ampere GPU with up to 2,048 CUDA cores, delivering 275 TOPS (delivering up to 275 trillion operations per second) with unprecedented energy efficiency. That means running complex neural networks — vibration analysis, pattern recognition, predictive diagnostics — directly on board, in real time, without relying on satellite links.
Through Nvidia’s CUDA-X and DeepStream ecosystems, D.gree integrates computer vision models for drone or camera feeds, and inference pipelines optimized for multiple sensors in parallel. With TensorRT, neural networks are compressed and accelerated, cutting latency and power consumption.
Bringing Nvidia onboard isn’t about adding a chip. It’s about connecting yachting to a global ecosystem already powering autonomous cars, industrial robots, and defense systems. Technologies validated in the toughest environments, now tuned for the sea. And with years of D.gree data as foundation, this is not speculative — it’s maritime-grade, and it’s ready today.
Near Future — The Star Trek Scenario
What’s next? A horizon where technologies stop being passive tools and become proactive allies of the captain.
Think of it this way: a refrigerator just sits there and does its job. It doesn’t know it’s a fridge, it doesn’t know what it contains, it doesn’t know if humans are opening it or what they need.
That’s a passive technology. On a yacht, thousands of passive technologies create the illusion of control — an illusion that collapses when complexity scales.
Reactive technologies are better: they respond to a command, an action, a need. But managing a thousand reactive subsystems on a 100-meter vessel still means endless workload.
The real leap is proactive intelligence: systems that anticipate, detect, and act before the human even asks. That’s where Intelligent Nodes and maritime-grade AI redefine life on board.
Emerging marine connectivity — from mesh Wi-Fi buoys to microcells embedded in ports — opens continuous communication between yachts and coastal infrastructure. From there, applications that once sounded like sci-fi become operational:
• Anchoring medusas: floating sensor structures linked to Intelligent Nodes, monitoring seabed, currents, and anchor safety.
• Docking drones: mapping quays and obstacles with Lidar and cameras, delivering predictive guidance for maneuvers.
• Smart cabins: adjusting comfort and energy consumption based on external conditions, guest presence, and preferences.
• Dynamic digital twins: real-time replicas of the vessel for predictive maintenance, simulation, and crew training.
The building blocks are already here: edge computing, resilient networks, advanced sensors. The next leap isn’t technical — it’s design. Creating an onboard experience intuitive for humans, intelligent for machines.
Conclusions
The yachting industry has never faced systemic pressure of this magnitude. Mastery of complexity doesn’t come from simplification or isolating systems — it comes from data.
Shipyards and owners already hold years of real-world data, collected at sea. Italy is uniquely positioned to anchor this shift. Not by waving a flag, but because Italian shipyards lead the global market, concentrate the world’s most advanced craftsmanship, and hold direct access to the owners and investors shaping tomorrow’s demand. When shipyards digitize their expertise and connect it with maritime data, they create a foundation rooted in the (Italian) genius loci — context, tacit knowledge, and craftsmanship that technology giants can enable but never originate.
People of the sea, always respectful of its power, can look cautious with technology. That caution isn’t a weakness — it’s wisdom. Transformation is demanding, but it can be built one retrofit at a time, one proactive function at a time, one new capability for each stakeholder.
At sea, every wave leaves a trace. Every trace builds intelligence. That’s how the sea forges its own robots — and only those who design with it will keep command.
For the kid I was, that’s not just technology — it’s design at starship scale, shaped for the sea.
Ps. The original article is published on Aug 21, 2025 | Leandro Agro, Substack
Competitive advantage now hinges on the ability to integrate emergent technologies
This abstract shows the core results of a scientific paper that will be presented at ICECH2025 13th International Conference on Emerging Challenges: BUSINESS DYNAMICS IN DISRUPTIVE ECONOMY | 31 October – 1 November, 2025 | Phu Tho, Vietnam https://icech.hust.edu.vn/category/show/id/1
The global yachting industry combines high-value manufacturing, advanced naval architecture, and luxury service, spanning from compact leisure craft to custom-built superyachts. Over the last thirty years, globalization and digitalization have reshaped markets, supply chains, and vessel lifecycles, elevating the role of data-driven technologies in performance, sustainability, and client experience.
Competitive advantage now hinges on the ability to integrate emergent technologies – such as IoT-based monitoring, digital twins, and AI-driven automation – while navigating high capital costs, environmental imperatives, and cybersecurity risks. This chapter investigates how sector-wide digitalization translates into firm capabilities and how smart-system integration affects performance and risk outcomes.
Two research questions guide the analysis: (RQ1) How do industry trends translate into firm-level adoption pathways, governance, and capability building for smart-system integration (skills, data infrastructure, supplier ecosystems)?
(RQ2) What operational, customer-value, environmental, and risk outcomes accompany smart-system integration, and through which mechanisms (interoperability, data governance, human–machine teaming)?
The study combines literature review, sector trend analysis, and a single-case study conducted in 2025, using interviews with a CEO, technical staff, and industry representatives, alongside the experience of the author as General Manager of the company, technical specifications and internal company documents.
The case highlights Italy’s leadership in the high-end segment and the tension between digitization and traditional craftsmanship. It concludes with identifying obstacles – notably skill gaps – and policy implications for workforce upskilling, cybersecurity, and governance to support scalable digital transformation in the yachting sector.
This year’s Cannes Yachting Festival (2024) became the stage for a turning point in yacht intelligence: the handover of the world’s first Digital Yachting Certificate, awarded by RINA to Sanlorenzo for achieving outstanding standards in onboard data management — powered by D.gree technologies.
The certification, granted to the fifth unit of the SP110 line, represents more than a recognition of innovation. It reflects a broader shift in the industry — from mechanical precision to digital verification, where yacht performance and safety are assessed through data-driven parameters aligned with new market and regulatory demands.
For D.gree, it marks a defining role as a trusted technological partner, helping shipyards translate digital ambitions into measurable progress, with tailor-made systems designed to turn information into assurance.
A new global standard for Digital Yachting
The new RINA Digital Yacht Class Notation establishes a reference framework for the certification of intelligent vessels.
It sets requirements for the design, monitoring, and remote management of both essential and non-essential onboard systems — ensuring that digital transformation never compromises reliability or safety.
Through this collaboration, D.gree supports Sanlorenzo in meeting key certification criteria, including:
Computer-Based Systems (CBS): Simplified hardware and software standards for yachts below 500 GT.
Data Shore Transfer (ADC): Secure and verifiable data transmission between yacht and shore.
Cyber Safety: Advanced protection standards for yachts with SL > 500 GT, defending critical digital assets from emerging threats.
From monitoring to remote intelligence
Beyond compliance, D.gree delivers a new layer of capability: remote supervision and predictive awareness.
At the heart of this innovation lies H-Log, the onboard SCADA system capable of collecting hundreds of parameters in real time — from alarms and performance data to the functional states of critical systems.
Its architecture is built around intelligent edge nodes, designed for optimized, high-frequency data acquisition and seamless communication with the H-System platform. Together, they form a distributed infrastructure where every yacht becomes a live digital twin — accessible both locally and remotely through an intuitive graphical interface.
This ecosystem gives captains, owners, and shipyards full situational awareness, enabling them to analyze scenarios, anticipate anomalies, and ensure reliability and safety at all times.
The future of certified intelligence at sea
D.gree’s contribution to Sanlorenzo’s digital evolution underlines a shared vision: to make yachting not only smarter, but certifiably intelligent.
As the industry moves toward a new digital standard, D.gree continues to bridge maritime heritage with data science — providing captains and owners with the deterministic tools they need to navigate the future of the sea.
