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Sea-Flux founder Tai Ellis named EY Entrepreneur Of The Year™ 2026 finalist

Auckland, New Zealand - 29 July 2026

Sea-Flux founder Tai Ellis named EY Entrepreneur Of The Year™ 2026 finalist

Sea-Flux, the New Zealand-founded maritime software company, today announced that founder and CEO Tai Ellis has been named a finalist in the Technology & Emerging Industries category of the 2026 EY Entrepreneur Of The Year™ New Zealand awards, a programme running in New Zealand since 1998 (and internationally) and one of the country’s leading business awards. EY Entrepreneur Of The Year™ recognises the impact of creators and innovators who lead successful businesses with purpose, vision and entrepreneurial spirit.

Tai built the first version of Sea-Flux in 2018 to solve a problem he was living himself and was driven to build a sustainable business, investing his entire personal capital. After working his way from deckhand to superyacht captain, he was frustrated by the paperwork and disconnected systems that came with running a vessel, and pieced together an early prototype simply to make his own working life easier. Initially, word of mouth carried that system to around 40 vessels across the Marlborough Sounds before he had set out to build a company.

Tai’s entrepreneurial spirit pushed him down one of the least comfortable paths – stepping away from the certainty of a career at sea, simply because he could see that things could be done smarter and safer in an industry he cared deeply about. It didn’t take long for a bigger question to surface: why limit this to New Zealand, when the crew of every domestic commercial vessel could benefit? As momentum built, he committed to it fully, trading life at sea for a life on land in the service of the people who work on the water. His passion, vision and relentless effort built the company from the ground up, assembling a team of talented, diverse individuals in Auckland. Sea-Flux now has reseller/partners in the UK, Northern Europe and Australia as the company develops its international channels

Today, Sea-Flux is a cloud-based Vessel Management System that works both online and offline across all devices, supporting more than 12,000 users across close to 1,500 vessels in 20 countries and growing! Its customers range from commercial fishing and aquaculture operators, Coastguard and Police vessels, and harbour masters to tugs, ferries and international superyachts and tourism charters. In New Zealand only, it is over 625 commercial vessels running the platform.

The company relaunched a fully rebuilt Version 2.0 of its platform in March 2026 and, in August 2025, secured investment from the Punakaiki Fund to accelerate product development and international growth. Its team has grown from 8 to 17 people over the past year.

“Sea-Flux began because I was living the problem.” “To be recognised alongside some of New Zealand’s most ambitious technology leaders means a great deal, not just to me, but to the entire Sea-Flux team and every operator who trusted us early on. We’ll keep listening, building and improving, with the same purpose we started with: helping maritime teams operate more safely and manage their vessels with greater confidence.” – Tai Ellis, founder and CEO of Sea-Flux.

“The impact Sea-Flux has on our customers is what fuels everything we do,” Tai said. “When a skipper tells us they walk onto their vessel feeling prepared instead of anxious, or that an audit that used to take days now takes hours, that’s the whole point. Our customers are some of the most passionate people I’ve ever worked with, and their belief in what we’re building drives us every single day.”

Tai founded Sea-Flux to protect human life at sea, specifically serving an underserved global fleet of mid-sized commercial vessels. Under his leadership, the company exists to transform regulatory compliance from a bureaucratic, administrative burden into an intuitive, proactive habit that ensures crews return home safely to their families at the end of every voyage.

Tai’s parents, Sharon and Vaughan Ellis, themselves in the aquaculture industry at the time, played a hands-on role in the company’s earliest days, touring New Zealand and Australia in a caravan to introduce Sea-Flux to marine operators. Both Vaughan and Sharon are still an integral part of the business, sharing their knowledge as the team expands.

“We couldn’t be prouder,” said Sharon and Vaughan Ellis. “What seems not so long ago we were living out of a caravan, driving from wharf to wharf to show operators what Tai had built. To see how far it’s come, the size of the team, the impact, the number of crews relying on it every day, is something we could only have dreamed of back then. Watching your son chase a dream, build a company here in New Zealand, and do really well in an industry we all love: that’s everything. He left school early, but he never left his ambition behind.”

The winners will be announced in November. Subscribe to our newsletter below to be updated with Sea-Flux’s news!

About Sea-Flux

Founded in 2018, Sea-Flux is a New Zealand-based maritime software company digitising safety and operational management for the global marine industry. Built by seafarers, for seafarers, its secure, cloud-based Vessel Management System works seamlessly online and offline, helping vessel operators move from paperwork to a single source of truth, strengthening the onboard safety culture while reducing operational risk for seafarers and the planet.