HII and C3 AI Forge Strategic Artificial Intelligence Partnership to Support US Navy Shipbuilding
Rhea-AI Summary
HII (NYSE: HII), America's largest military shipbuilder, has announced a strategic partnership with C3 AI (NYSE: AI) to implement artificial intelligence solutions across its shipbuilding operations. The collaboration aims to accelerate shipbuilding throughput at HII's Newport News Shipbuilding and Ingalls Shipbuilding divisions.
The partnership expands on a successful six-month initial Enterprise AI deployment at Ingalls Shipbuilding, where AI algorithms optimized work schedules and demonstrated significant improvements in schedule performance. The program will now be scaled across HII shipyards, focusing on enhancing planning and scheduling for amphibious ships, destroyers, nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, and submarines for the U.S. Navy.
The implementation will integrate AI solutions across multiple areas, including planning, operations, supply chain, and labor allocation. The collaboration will also extend to uncrewed vehicle production and sustainment, marking a significant step in the digitization of America's defense industrial base.
Positive
- Successful initial 6-month AI deployment showed significant schedule performance improvements
- Partnership aims to accelerate shipbuilding throughput for U.S. Navy vessels
- AI implementation spans multiple critical areas: planning, operations, supply chain, and labor allocation
- Expansion into uncrewed vehicle production and sustainment opportunities
Negative
- None.
Insights
HII-C3 AI partnership expands proven AI implementation across shipyards, potentially accelerating Navy vessel production amid mounting geopolitical pressures.
This strategic partnership between HII and C3 AI represents a significant advancement in military shipbuilding automation, with substantial implications for naval readiness. The collaboration builds upon a successful six-month deployment at Ingalls Shipbuilding that demonstrated measurable improvements in schedule performance through AI-optimized work scheduling.
What's particularly notable is the comprehensive scope of this AI implementation - spanning planning, operations, supply chain, and labor allocation across both Newport News and Ingalls shipyards. These facilities construct critical naval assets including nuclear carriers, submarines, amphibious vessels, and destroyers.
The partnership addresses a pressing strategic challenge for the Navy: increasing shipbuilding throughput amid growing international tensions and fleet modernization requirements. By digitizing complex production processes, HII can potentially reduce costly delays that have plagued previous shipbuilding programs.
For context, naval shipbuilding represents one of the most complex industrial undertakings, with thousands of interconnected scheduling dependencies and supply chain challenges. AI optimization in this environment could yield substantial efficiency gains that translate to faster delivery of vessels to the fleet.
This collaboration also signals the defense sector's accelerating adoption of advanced digital technologies to maintain America's military-industrial edge. The extension to uncrewed vehicle production further demonstrates how this partnership aligns with the Navy's autonomous systems priorities.
This partnership showcases C3 AI's expanding footprint in the critical defense sector, leveraging their C3 Agentic AI Platform for industrial optimization. The press release highlights a key technical achievement: the successful deployment of complex algorithmic systems that demonstrated "significant improvements in schedule performance" during the initial six-month trial at Ingalls Shipbuilding.
What's technically significant is the scale and complexity of the implementation challenge. Naval shipbuilding represents one of the most demanding industrial environments for AI deployment, requiring systems that can orchestrate thousands of interdependent tasks, manage supply chain constraints, and optimize labor allocation across massive facilities.
The partnership's focus on planning and scheduling optimization aligns with C3 AI's strengths in predictive analytics and process optimization. By leveraging the company's enterprise AI capabilities across HII's shipyards, they're essentially creating a digital twin of the shipbuilding process that can identify bottlenecks and suggest operational adjustments in real-time.
This implementation demonstrates the practical application of AI beyond theoretical use cases - showing tangible operational improvements in a complex manufacturing environment where even small efficiency gains translate to meaningful schedule acceleration. The expansion from a successful pilot to full implementation across multiple shipyards validates the technology's effectiveness.
From a technological perspective, this partnership illustrates how AI is evolving beyond experimental applications to become an essential component of critical infrastructure and defense industrial processes. The reference to "uncrewed vehicle production" suggests additional applications in autonomous systems manufacturing, which represents another high-growth defense technology segment.
NEWPORT NEWS, Va., June 30, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- HII (NYSE: HII), America’s largest military shipbuilder, and C3 AI (NYSE: AI), the Enterprise AI application software company, have announced a strategic partnership to expand digital technologies and apply artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate shipbuilding throughput at HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding and Ingalls Shipbuilding divisions.
“Increasing shipbuilding throughput is a critical priority for HII and the U.S. Navy,” HII CEO Chris Kastner said. “We’re proud to partner with C3 AI to leverage data and digital capabilities like artificial intelligence in the urgent work of delivering ships to the U.S. Navy.”
“C3 AI is proud to team with HII to ensure its vision in maintaining the nation’s maritime industrial dominance through the adoption of next-generation shipbuilding technologies. This collaboration underscores our growing role as a strategic provider to the U.S. government and defense sector,” said Thomas M. Siebel, chairman and CEO, C3 AI. “By deploying Enterprise AI across planning, operations, and the supply chain, we are powering a modern, intelligent infrastructure to ensure America’s edge in naval readiness.”
An image accompanying this release is available at: http://hii.com/news/hii-and-c3-ai-forge-strategic-artificial-intelligence-partnership-to-support-us-navy-shipbuilding/.
HII is broadening an existing partnership with C3 AI to integrate AI solutions across its shipbuilding operations, including in the areas of planning, operations, supply chain and labor allocation. These efforts are expected to accelerate production and support the U.S. Navy’s fleet readiness needs. The collaboration will also include opportunities in uncrewed vehicle production and sustainment.
The collaboration builds on a six-month initial Enterprise AI production deployment program conducted at Ingalls Shipbuilding, where shipbuilding teams leveraged complex algorithms to adjust and optimize work schedules. The initial deployment of the C3 AI application — powered by the C3 Agentic AI Platform — demonstrated significant improvements in schedule performance, an effort which will now be scaled across HII shipyards.
Initial efforts will focus on leveraging AI to enhance planning and scheduling at HII’s two shipbuilding divisions: Ingalls Shipbuilding, which builds amphibious ships and destroyers for the U.S. Navy; and Newport News Shipbuilding, which constructs U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and nuclear-powered submarines for the U.S. Navy.
This alliance marks a significant milestone in the digitization of America’s defense industrial base and reflects the commitment of both companies to strengthening U.S. naval capabilities through innovation.
About HII
HII is a global, all-domain defense provider. HII’s mission is to deliver the world’s most powerful ships and all-domain solutions in service of the nation, creating the advantage for our customers to protect peace and freedom around the world. As the nation’s largest military shipbuilder, and with a more than 135-year history of advancing U.S. national security, HII delivers critical capabilities extending from ships to unmanned systems, cyber, ISR, AI/ML and synthetic training. Headquartered in Virginia, HII’s workforce is 44,000 strong. For more information, visit:
- HII on the web: https://www.HII.com/
- HII on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TeamHII
- HII on X: https://www.twitter.com/WeAreHII
- HII on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/WeAreHII
About C3.ai, Inc.
C3 AI is the Enterprise AI application software company. C3 AI delivers a family of fully integrated products including the C3 Agentic AI Platform, an end-to-end platform for developing, deploying, and operating enterprise AI applications, C3 AI applications, a portfolio of industry-specific SaaS enterprise AI applications that enable the digital transformation of organizations globally, and C3 Generative AI, a suite of domain-specific generative AI offerings for the enterprise.
| Contacts: | ||
HII Public Relations Greg McCarthy (202) 264-7126 gregory.j.mccarthy@hii-co.com Investor Relations investor.relations@hii-co.com | C3 AI Public Relations Edelman Lisa Kennedy 415-914-8336 pr@c3.ai Investor Relations ir@c3.ai | |
A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/dd31c1e1-c6a9-45fa-aed4-e528eedc2987
FAQ
What is the purpose of HII's partnership with C3 AI?
What results did HII achieve in their initial AI deployment with C3 AI?
Which HII shipbuilding divisions will implement the C3 AI technology?
What areas of shipbuilding operations will the HII-C3 AI partnership enhance?
How does the HII-C3 AI partnership impact U.S. naval capabilities?
