A Defense-Grade AI Company Just Secured an Exclusive Pathway to Two Offshore Energy Blocks in West Africa. Here’s Why That Matters

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Issued on behalf of VisionWave Holdings, Inc.

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VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 24, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Equity-Insider.com — The most valuable technology companies of the next decade will not be the ones that stay in their lane. They will be the ones that take defense-grade capabilities — AI, autonomy, sensing, signal processing — and deploy them into the trillion-dollar industries where legacy methods still dominate.

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That thesis is playing out in real time across the defence-industrial complex. Palantir Technologies (NYSE: PLTR) just had 75 separate U.S. Army contracts consolidated into a single $10 billion enterprise agreement, reflecting the military’s shift from buying individual tools to licensing entire AI-driven platforms. Palantir’s stock has gained more than 80% over the past year as investors price in the expansion of its Gotham and Foundry platforms from defense into commercial and industrial verticals.

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Kratos Defense (NASDAQ: KTOS) rallied 31% over six months on a string of contract wins — including a $61 million Navy aerial target production deal, a $7 million counter-UAS system contract, and hypersonic vehicle testing awards — proving that autonomous systems built for defense are generating accelerating revenue as the DOD budget for AI reaches $66 billion.

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The pattern is clear: defence AI companies that can cross into adjacent industrial markets carry a valuation premium the market is willing to pay for.

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Oceaneering International (NYSE: OII), with 60 years of deep-sea expertise, operates one of the largest global fleets of subsea robotics and autonomous underwater vehicles, providing AI-driven inspection, survey, and maintenance capabilities across offshore energy, defense, and aerospace markets. The company reported $2.8 billion in 2025 revenue with operating income up 24% year over year.

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SoundHound AI (NASDAQ: SOUN) saw revenue jump 68% year over year by taking voice AI originally built for automotive and applying it across restaurants, healthcare, and financial services. The companies that are building multi-industry platforms from defence-grade cores are the ones drawing institutional capital.

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And now, an AI sensing company originally built for defense and security applications has taken its most significant step into a new vertical.

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VisionWave Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: VWAV) announced today that it has entered into a Letter of Engagement with the National Oil Company of Liberia (NOCAL) relating to offshore petroleum Blocks LB-4 and LB-5 in the Liberia Basin. The LOE provides VisionWave with an exclusive eight-month pathway to advance toward a potential Production Sharing Contract with the Government of Liberia, subject to prequalification, regulatory approvals, and legislative ratification.

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This is not a pivot away from defence. It is a deployment of the same core technology into a market where the economics of even incremental improvement are enormous. Offshore exploration is one of the most capital-intensive industries on Earth, and it relies heavily on legacy seismic and geophysical methods that have changed relatively little in decades.

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VisionWave intends to evaluate its proprietary RF-based sensing and imaging technologies as part of the exploration workflow alongside traditional methods. The company believes RF approaches may provide additional signal pathways in complex subsurface environments, potentially enabling improved detection of challenging geological formations, enhanced subsurface modeling, and more efficient identification of undersea resources.