Kraken Adds Offshore Exec Sam Allen as Advisor

Canada-based Kraken Robotics announced that it has hired longtime offshore industry executive Sam Allen as a strategic advisor to help the marine technology company refine its strategy for the international offshore energy market.

Allen was President of Technip Canada from 1997 to 2012 and headed up Technip Oceania from 2012 until he retired from Technip in 2018.

At Kraken, he will focus on landing additional pilot projects and converting pilot projects to longer-term recurring revenue contracts, the company said, adding this may include collaboration with additional industry partners as well as M&A activity.

“Kraken has developed industry leading underwater data acquisition and analytic tools that can provide ultra-high definition images of subsea assets and infrastructure,” said Karl Kenny, Kraken President & CEO. “Our challenge now is to apply Artificial Intelligence to analyze the data and to monitor the change in subsea assets over time to be able to predict the state of these assets into the future (i.e. predictive analytics). We continue to refine our tools and processes through lessons learned on our OceanVision pilot project as well as numerous other pilot projects we have completed for a variety of customers (military, offshore energy, ocean science, etc.). We look forward to leveraging Sam’s experience and relationships to generate significant growth for our robotic services and data business.”

“With more than 30 years of experience in the offshore energy industry, I have first-hand experience in the power of underwater robotics which to date has mainly consisted of using remotely operated vehicles for inspection and manipulation of subsea assets,” Allen said. “I expect the utilization of autonomous systems and robotics in the offshore energy market to grow significantly over the coming years as companies invest in new projects and extending the life cycle of legacy assets through the use of high-quality data acquisition sensors, machine learning  and predictive analytics. With a strong portfolio of ultra-high definition imaging data acquisition and analytic tools, Kraken has the potential to build a significant recurring revenue business.”