Commercial fishing captains have a problem that sounds almost quaint in the age of AI. They stare at sonar screens for hours, watching for blips that might be fish. It's exhausting, error-prone, and hasn't fundamentally changed in decades. The sonar technology itself has gotten better, sharper resolution, longer range. But the person interpreting it? Still human. Still tired. Still missing targets.

KONGSBERG just changed that. The Norwegian technology group launched Sonar AI, what it describes as the world's first AI sonar operator for omnidirectional fish-finding sonars. Built in partnership with Viam, a US-based robotics software platform, the system watches the sonar continuously, detects fish in real time, and alerts captains the moment a target appears.

Think of it as a tireless crew member who never looks away from the screen, never takes a coffee break, and gets better at the job every single trip.

Sonar AI launched alongside KONGSBERG's new Simrad SY60 sonar at the Palm Beach International Boat Show on March 24. The system sits on top of KONGSBERG's existing omnidirectional sonar hardware and adds a layer of machine intelligence that handles the continuous monitoring humans struggle to maintain.

When Sonar AI detects fish, it places a visual marker directly on the display and triggers an audio alert. If the captain's eyes are elsewhere, a directional audio cue indicates which sonar beam picked up the target. The system also records fishing history, building a dataset that enables predictive fish-finding over time. Your sonar learns where the fish tend to be, and when.

"Pairing the Simrad SY60 with the Viam platform enables KONGSBERG to bring a truly transformative product to market," says Eliot Horowitz, Viam's CEO and co-founder (he previously co-founded MongoDB). "Virtual sonar operators are just one example of how applying AI and robotics in the physical world can impact user experiences and overall safety on the oceans."

Existing SY50 owners can upgrade to the SY60, and Sonar AI supports both models. That backward compatibility is a smart move. KONGSBERG isn't forcing its existing customer base to buy entirely new equipment. It's offering an upgrade path that makes the AI capabilities accessible to the installed base.

KONGSBERG is one of Norway's oldest and most significant technology companies. Founded in 1814, it spans defence, maritime, and digital systems. The Simrad brand has been a dominant name in marine electronics for decades. This isn't a company that typically partners with Silicon Valley startups.

But Viam isn't a typical startup. Horowitz co-founded MongoDB, the database company that went public and now trades at a multi-billion-dollar market cap. He launched Viam to build a universal software platform for robotics and smart machines. The partnership with KONGSBERG, which began in 2025 with Viam's integration on the SY50, represents the kind of industrial-grade AI deployment that most robotics companies only talk about.

KONGSBERG's Martin Tollefsen put it directly: "Viam has allowed us to integrate AI technology on the Simrad SY60 that only a few years ago we would have never thought possible at scale." That phrase, at scale, is doing a lot of work. Lab demos of AI-powered sonar exist. Shipping it on production hardware sold to commercial fishing fleets worldwide is the hard part.

The global commercial fishing industry generates roughly $300 billion annually. Despite that scale, technology adoption on the bridge has been slow. Most fish-finding still relies on captains and crew manually interpreting sonar data, a skill that takes years to develop and degrades with fatigue.

Sonar AI doesn't replace that expertise. It augments it. A captain who knows the fishing grounds still brings irreplaceable knowledge about currents, seasons, and species behavior. What the AI handles is the tedious, continuous monitoring that humans are bad at. The combination of human experience and machine vigilance is where the real value sits.

Future updates will expand Sonar AI's capabilities, though KONGSBERG hasn't detailed the roadmap. Predictive analytics, species identification, and integration with navigation systems are all obvious next steps. The fishing history database that Sonar AI builds over time becomes more valuable with every trip, creating a data flywheel that could eventually give KONGSBERG customers a significant competitive advantage.

There's something fitting about a Norwegian company bringing AI to commercial fishing. Norway's relationship with the ocean runs centuries deep, from Viking longships to modern offshore energy to one of the world's largest fishing fleets. KONGSBERG sitting at the intersection of that heritage and cutting-edge AI feels less like a pivot and more like an inevitability.

Sonar AI won't be the last product to emerge from the KONGSBERG-Viam partnership. It's a first move in what's clearly intended as a broader integration of AI across marine operations. For the fishing industry, the message is clear: the tireless virtual crew member has arrived. And it doesn't need coffee.