---
id: organizations/coastal-assembly
about:
  label: Coastal Assembly
  description: >-
    Coastal Assembly, a public benefit company out of MIT's Self-Assembly Lab,
    models how sand moves along a shoreline from satellite, wave, current and
    seabed data, then places engineered reef structures so that waves rebuild
    the beach.
  tags:
    - coastal
    - erosion
    - beach
    - reef
    - maldives
    - shoreline
organization:
  homepage: 'https://www.coastalassembly.ai/'
provenance:
  origin: agent
  sources:
    - title: COASTAL ASSEMBLY PBC
      url: 'https://www.coastalassembly.ai/'
    - title: COASTAL ASSEMBLY PBC (about)
      url: 'https://www.coastalassembly.ai/about'
  created: '2026-10-17'
  reviewed: '2026-10-17'
  reviewed_by: 'Claude, from the sources listed'
  status: draft
import:
  source: openai-linkedin-scrape 2026-10-17
  id: DT035
  kind: twin_candidate
  family: twins_and_candidates
  priority: high
  verified: true
  posts:
    - P006
    - P079
    - P119
  posters:
    - 'Coastal Assembly, PBC'
    - Bill Davis
    - Skylar Tibbits
domains:
  - water
  - ecology
---
Coastal Assembly PBC grew out of ten years of research at MIT's Self-Assembly Lab, where wave-tank experiments and simulations showed that the forces that strip sand from a beach can be guided to return it. Its site gives "est. 2017". The team is led by Skylar Tibbits (CEO), Sarah Dole (COO) and Walter Zesk (CTO), and mixes physicists, architects and computer scientists working with marine biologists and Maldivian partners.

The modelling side is what the company calls its intelligence platform: it ingests years of satellite imagery, wave and current records, tide and swell data and seabed bathymetry, extracts how a coastline has moved, projects where it is heading, and flags the stretches eroding fastest. Every studied site stays on the map as a growing record of coastline behaviour. From that model the company designs the spacing and angle of reef structures for a specific site, casts them nearby and lowers them onto the seabed from a barge; there is nothing to run or maintain afterwards, and the structures are meant to become reef habitat. Each site is then tracked against the model's forecast.

The worked example on its site is the JW Marriott Maldives, where fifty-four structures in a hexagonal pattern about thirty metres long are credited with ninety feet of new beach in six months without pumped sand, and a later satellite pass showing the beach still gaining. Clients named are JW Marriott Maldives and Taj Exotica. It is a commercial service sold by assessment.

Status: operating, with deployments in the Maldives. Coverage quoted on the company's own page says more projects are planned for Boston.