Water smart consumer hardware brand MIRAVA raises tens of millions of RMB in angel round led by Unity Ventures | New Unity Ventures portfolio member
Redefining "How to Play With Water" Through the Consumer Logic of Smart Hardware
MIRAVA, the consumer-facing smart water hardware brand under Orca Tech, today announced it has raised nearly RMB 50 million in an angel round led by Unity Ventures — its first external funding since establishment.
MIRAVA's debut product targets the consumer-grade smart electric yacht category. The team is dedicated to deeply integrating intelligent ship navigation technology with leisure yacht industrial design, providing intelligent water leisure equipment for the global market.
Unity Ventures believes that as the marine economy continues to develop, markets such as water leisure consumption are welcoming new growth opportunities. Traditional yachts have long been constrained by high barriers to entry and single application scenarios. MIRAVA reduces operational complexity through intelligent driving and interaction, expands diverse water life scenarios through innovative design, and pushes yachts toward electrification, intelligence, and affordability. Building on Orca Tech's technical accumulation in ship intelligence, MIRAVA is well-positioned to transform professional expertise into consumer-grade smart hardware products, opening up the global water consumption market and enabling more people to enjoy the freedom of water life.
Smart water consumer hardware brand and smart electric yacht company MIRAVA recently completed an angel round of nearly RMB 50 million, led by Unity Ventures, with Monad Ventures and Eversnow as co-investors. The funds will be primarily directed toward core technology R&D iteration, production line mass manufacturing construction to ensure delivery of first-batch end-user orders, and building localized European distribution and service systems to accelerate overseas market adaptation and commercial expansion.
MIRAVA's debut product targets the consumer-grade smart electric yacht category. The team is dedicated to deeply integrating intelligent ship navigation technology with leisure yacht industrial design, providing intelligent water leisure equipment for the global market.
Core team members hail from leading tech companies such as Huawei and SenseTime, as well as renowned universities including Tsinghua University and Northwestern Polytechnical University, covering domains such as intelligent algorithms, shipboard hardware R&D, high-end industrial design, yacht craftsmanship manufacturing, and overseas channel sales — possessing a composite capability foundation spanning technology R&D, yacht craftsmanship, and globalized markets.
Its first smart electric yacht, the M800E, was unveiled in Europe at the Cannes Yachting Festival in September 2026, with plans to appear at the Düsseldorf International Boat Show in January 2027. The first batch of founder edition units will be officially delivered by mid-next year. The product has completed R&D refinement and entered the small-batch production and delivery phase.
MIRAVA's first smart electric yacht, the M800E
The leisure yacht industry, after decades of development, has long failed to see essential product innovation.
According to industry reports from the International Council of Marine Industry Associations (ICOMIA), global recreational boat ownership stands at approximately 33 million vessels. The United States market accounts for nearly half, with over 11 million leisure yachts serving family entertainment, fishing, and outdoor activities — roughly one yacht for every ten households. In Europe, the Nordic water leisure atmosphere is particularly strong, with Norway and Finland ranking in the top tier globally for per capita boat ownership.
It is fair to say that water leisure activities in Europe and the United States have become as mature and widespread as skiing, camping, and RV travel — established outdoor lifestyle choices.
Yet despite its substantial scale, the industry's product form has long remained stuck in the mechanical era. Traditional yachts carry high purchase barriers, complex driving operations, and high maintenance costs, with a steep learning curve. At the same time, the industry is severely vertically fragmented: racing fishing boats, wake surf boats, large-space pontoon boats, and other vessel types mostly serve single niche scenarios for hardcore enthusiasts, often deterring ordinary novice users.
"The vast majority of traditional yachts on the market are developed around hardcore enthusiasts — fishing boats for sea fishing, wake boats for wake surfing, pontoon boats for static water gatherings. Vessel functions are highly specialized. If users want to experience multiple activities, they often need to buy multiple boats, which is cost-prohibitive," said Chi Yuhao, MIRAVA co-founder. "But more users hope to experience more recreational scenarios on a single boat, rather than paying specifically for an extreme hobby."
This is precisely the track MIRAVA is targeting: not building a more complex traditional yacht, but redefining "how to play on water" with the consumer logic of smart hardware.
Traditional yachts follow a "people revolve around the boat" driving logic. When users want to swim, dive, or paddleboard, the vessel can only dock at shore or drop anchor; once people enter the water, the boat cannot move. If users want to paddleboard or dive, they can only operate within the boat's vicinity and cannot venture far. Once they want to explore farther waters, someone must remain on board, or they must return to the boat to proceed to the next location.
This seemingly reasonable model precisely constrains the water recreation experience. "What users expect is for the boat to revolve around them — while they're playing in the water, the boat follows nearby, ready to respond to needs at any time. But traditional yachts rely on manual control; once the user enters the water, the vessel loses control," Chi said.
To break this binding, MIRAVA's solution is to upgrade intelligent driving from assisted driving to scenario-based auto-following, enabling the yacht to autonomously perceive user position and maintain following without manual operation.
The MIRAVA team adopted a smart wristband as the perception and interaction terminal for the entire solution. The wristband serves not only as a positioning beacon but also supports NFC one-touch boat unlocking,兼顾 daily boarding convenience.
When users wearing the wristband enter the water for swimming, paddleboarding, diving, and other activities, the yacht continuously parses the user's real-time position based on wristband signals, following and protecting wherever the user swims. For multi-person group outing scenarios, the system only responds to follow commands from the wristband-wearing user; other people on board will not interfere with the vessel's operating logic.
Wake surfing scenario
"We're not using intelligent driving to剥夺 the fun of piloting a boat, but rather putting the choice in users' hands. Let users manually control when they want to drive, and hand it over to the intelligent driving platform when they don't want to operate," Chi said.
Beyond the pioneering smart follow function, MIRAVA has also made new attempts in product structure, enabling a single yacht to carry more interaction scenarios.
The product logic of traditional yachts is "one category corresponds to one activity." Fishing boats are only suitable for fishing, wake boats only for surfing, pontoon boats only for family gatherings. If users want to experience multiple activities, they must either purchase multiple boats or compromise on functionality. The MIRAVA team proposed extending yacht application scenarios by transforming vessel spatial structure.
In hull design, the 8-meter-class platform adopts a face-to-face large-space layout, accommodating 8 to 10 people traveling together. For high-frequency scenarios such as family gatherings and leisure cruising, it features independent bathroom facilities, onboard refrigerator, and six sets of high-low audio speakers, meeting comfort and entertainment needs during multi-person outings.
The most differentiated feature is the mother-child boat mode. The MIRAVA yacht's stern adopts a tail flip module and A-pillar hammock design. The tail module can switch between four modes: cruising, fishing, gathering, and child boat recreation. The A-pillar can deploy as a hammock, expanding the vessel from a single navigation space to a multi-functional outdoor leisure platform without increasing hull size.
Multi-functional outdoor leisure platform
In child boat mode, the yacht's stern expansion module carries its own power and can transform and decouple into an independently operable child boat. When users need to land on islands, approach reef areas, or shallow waters where the large boat cannot dock, the child boat can be deployed for transfer and near-shore exploration, breaking through the scenario boundaries that traditionally constrain yachts due to draft and berthing conditions.
Over the past decades, hardware specifications have been the universal competitive benchmark in the yacht industry — horsepower, hull size, and maximum speed are the default language dealers and users use to evaluate a product. The vast majority of new product iterations operate within this mature system as performance optimizations. "But today's user demands have clearly changed. The industry's growth driver comes from a new generation of young people whose yacht expectations center on family and friends outings rather than business entertainment, prioritizing versatility, ease of use, and closeness to the ocean."
Chi pointed out that the core difference between these users and traditional yacht demographics is that "they're not 'boat people,' they're 'water people.' Users don't want a performance machine, but an intelligent platform that can carry multiple water lifestyles. What our product aims to do is precisely target this demand gap, lowering user barriers through intelligent functions and redefining the freedom of water activities."
In terms of market strategy, MIRAVA will take Europe as its launch beachhead. On one hand, Europe possesses extremely strong yacht brand community momentum, with deep-rooted water leisure consumption in the Nordic and Mediterranean regions, where local users demonstrate higher acceptance of intelligent innovative experiences. At the same time, European yacht consumption is undergoing structural migration, with demand gradually shifting from business entertainment orientation toward family daily water leisure, providing suitable user soil for MIRAVA's new category positioning.
The MIRAVA team revealed that the company plans to complete first-batch product deliveries next year, and after achieving regional market and brand mindshare validation, will gradually expand into core markets such as the Middle East and North America.
The following is an excerpt from an interview with MIRAVA co-founder Chi Yuhao (lightly edited):
Q1
MIRAVA's target users are "water people," not "boat people." How does this user positioning influence your product definition?
Chi Yuhao: Traditional yachts serve "people who know boats" — users who pursue extreme performance and are willing to invest substantial time learning boat piloting, equipment maintenance, and docking operations. But in the water consumption market, the vastly larger group is actually "water people"; their core demands are swimming, diving, accompanying children, and gathering with friends and family, without wanting to be constrained by complicated boat operations.
The underlying needs of these two groups differ fundamentally. The former centers on the boat, pursuing the sense of control and performance boundaries; the latter centers on the water experience, with the vessel serving as a platform for carrying activities.
MIRAVA's product definition revolves around the latter, with Freedom as the entry point. Users don't need to spend time on driving, stopping, or holding position — they can truly go play. Intelligent driving doesn't剥夺 the fun of piloting; it gives you choice. Drive when you want to, hand it over to the boat when you don't. This also determines that we won't pursue extremes on any single performance dimension, but rather "have it all," making every aspect of performance experience good enough to satisfy 70% to 80% of user needs.
MIRAVA autonomous driving system
This stems from the team's underlying judgment of contemporary consumer behavior. With increasingly abundant leisure and entertainment options available and diverse external demand stimulation, most ordinary users lean toward lightweight, shallow-participation recreational experiences; deep hardcore enthusiasts are not the brand's target audience.
Many high-ticket leisure products create a "ownership is burden" consumption dilemma. After completing purchase, users develop psychological pressure to use the product frequently, worrying about equipment idleness wasting their investment, and are forced to expend time and energy for the product — ultimately often setting it aside completely after brief experience. This phenomenon is widespread in bicycles, outdoor equipment, and similarly applies to yachts. What the MIRAVA team hopes to do is precisely dissolve this hardware-entangled consumption burden, freeing users from additional psychological constraints tied to the vessel itself.
Q2
Yachts are a category with high entry barriers and long cycles. Why did MIRAVA choose to enter from this scenario? As a new brand, how do you define your category positioning?
Chi Yuhao: There are two ways to judge entry path: building up from smart accessories and gradually upgrading; or going top-down, directly making high-value products to establish brand recognition. We chose the latter.
Yacht projects require large capital investment and lengthy R&D cycles, with very high market entry barriers. But high entry barriers themselves transform into competitive moats — the conditions that challenge MIRAVA similarly block most external competitors from entering. Our team has years of technical engineering沉淀 in intelligent ship navigation, supply chain management, and complete machine manufacturing. These capabilities can be复用 to consumer yacht product development, and this is the foundation that gives us confidence to enter this heavy-asset赛道.
More importantly, yachts are one of very few consumer categories that can simultaneously carry brand premium and intelligent experience. Once you establish recognition in this category, the room for downward extension is enormous.
High-ticket products have a characteristic: users' first reaction is categorization. Yet once you're placed in an existing category, you inevitably get compared within a fixed value chain system. Competing in a system others are familiar with, new brands can hardly win.
MIRAVA's core strategy is to create an entirely new category: Next Generation Smart Boat. Not electric yacht, not smart yacht, but a category that didn't previously exist. This is like when Tesla first emerged — people couldn't directly compare it to any existing vehicle model, because it represented a completely different product logic.
Only when users examine you with a new set of standards do you have the opportunity to break free from existing value anchoring.
Momenta IPO, 14 Portfolio Companies Announce New Funding | Unity Ventures Autumn Update
