Founder & CEO, Nautilus Technologies · Former CEO, Pleuger Industries
Anton Schneerson works at the intersection of maritime technology, energy infrastructure, and defense. As Chief Executive Officer of Pleuger Industries (2022–2025), he led the 95-year-old Hamburg engineering company into the StEnSea consortium — "Stored Energy in the Sea," the first government-funded open-seabed pumped-hydro storage programme, backed by a combined US$7.7 million from the U.S. Department of Energy and the German BMWK, alongside Fraunhofer IEE and the California firm Sperra. He is the founder and CEO of Nautilus Technologies.
For most of the last decade, the seabed was treated as background. That assumption no longer holds. The same deep-water envelope — roughly 500 to 800 metres — now carries the infrastructure that modern economies depend on: offshore wind, high-voltage power interconnectors, the submarine cables that move the world's data, and a new generation of subsea energy storage. Energy and security have converged on the same few hundred metres of water, a shift made explicit by NATO's seabed-protection posture and the European Union's dedicated subsea-infrastructure programmes.
StEnSea sits at the front edge of that convergence. The principle is pumped hydro inverted into the ocean: surplus grid power empties a hollow concrete sphere on the seabed against the surrounding pressure; releasing the water back in spins a pump-turbine and returns electricity to the grid. Fraunhofer researchers estimate the global technical potential at roughly 817,000 gigawatt-hours. The first deep-water prototype — a 9-to-10-metre, ~400-tonne sphere rated at 500 kW — is scheduled to deploy off Long Beach, California, in 2026.
Pleuger's foundational technology is the water-filled, glandless submersible motor that Friedrich Wilhelm Pleuger patented in 1929 — the design that first made it possible to move water from great depth, and the engineering lineage that still underpins the company's modern units. That capability is the basis for StEnSea's heart: Pleuger's Pump-as-Turbine technology runs a submersible motor in reverse, generating electricity as ocean pressure drives water back into a seabed sphere. The science of the storage system itself has been led by Fraunhofer IEE since 2013. What the dual-government funding added was the decisive push — the capital and validation that turned a proven, latent capability into a first-of-its-kind deployed subsea programme.
Schneerson repositioned Pleuger from a traditional submersible-pump manufacturer into a renewable-energy systems and technology business — the strategic shift that made a German Mittelstand engineering company a credible partner in a U.S. federally-funded programme. Under his leadership the company recorded approximately 20% profitability in 2023, its strongest margin in over fifteen years. He built a dedicated renewables push, appointing a Chief Commercial Officer in 2023; over the same period Pleuger delivered the cooling and seawater-lift pump systems for HVDC converter platforms across the BorWin Alpha–6 series, East Anglia 3, and Sunrise Wind.
The collaboration was deliberately transatlantic. In February 2024, Pleuger acquired AVI International, giving the German company a U.S. manufacturing and service base in Connecticut. On the German tranche, Pleuger is the named co-grantee — alongside Fraunhofer IEE — on the €3.4 million BMWK funding (Förderkennzeichen 03EI4047A). On the U.S. side, partner Sperra leads the 3D-printed concrete sphere under its US$4 million Department of Energy award.
For precision: Schneerson led Pleuger into the consortium that secured the funding — the grants are institutional, and the StEnSea concept was conceived in 2011 by Prof. Horst Schmidt-Böcking and Dr. Gerhard Luther.
In 2025 Schneerson founded Nautilus Technologies, a European technology company building the autonomy and sensor-fusion layer that protects critical maritime, subsea, and energy infrastructure — ports, offshore wind, and subsea power and data cables. The vessels and sensors are the body; the command intelligence — hardware-agnostic, sovereign, real-time — is the moat. The same engineering discipline that treats a pump-turbine as a field-swappable module shapes Nautilus: software-defined, modular, and built for scale.
A maritime-technology operator working across energy infrastructure and defense. Founder and CEO of Nautilus Technologies and former CEO of Pleuger Industries (2022–2025), which he led into the StEnSea US–German government-funded subsea energy storage consortium with Fraunhofer IEE and Sperra.
"Stored Energy in the Sea" — the first government-funded open-seabed pumped-hydro storage programme, backed by ~US$7.7 million from the U.S. DOE and German BMWK (Förderkennzeichen 03EI4047A). Pleuger is a named co-grantee and supplies the Pump-as-Turbine technology; the first prototype deploys off Long Beach, California, in 2026.
A European technology company building the autonomy and sensor-fusion layer that protects critical maritime, subsea, and energy infrastructure — ports, offshore wind, subsea power and data cables.
~20% profitability in 2023 (strongest margin in 15+ years), U.S. expansion via the AVI International acquisition in Connecticut, entry into the StEnSea consortium, and delivery of pump systems for BorWin Alpha–6, East Anglia 3, and Sunrise Wind offshore wind projects.