Sofar Ocean
Ocean sensing hardware and data platform, including the Spotter buoy and Wayfinder maritime routing software
About
Sofar Ocean builds accessible ocean sensing and data tools for industry, science, and conservation. Their flagship product, the Spotter buoy, is a compact, solar-powered device that collects real-time wave, wind, and sea-surface data from the open ocean. Data from a global network of Spotter buoys feeds into Sofar's marine weather forecasting and vessel routing platform.
The company also offers Wayfinder, a voyage optimization and weather routing service for commercial shipping, helping vessels find safer and more fuel-efficient routes. Their open API and developer tools (Python and TypeScript SDKs) enable programmatic access to ocean data, supporting research, offshore operations, and maritime logistics.
Sofar Ocean is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with a distributed team spanning the US, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. The company maintains open-source projects on GitHub covering wave data analysis, firmware tools, and ocean science packages.