Ulysses
Mako AUV and Thresher ASV
Coasts/subsea assets are exploited/damaged; fleets lack affordable, persistent, scalable surface-and-subsea surveillance and intervention solutions.
Why it mattersUlysses is building the defining platform for autonomous maritime operations. We’ve developed ultra-low-cost, fully autonomous surface and underwater vehicles that can replace expensive ships, reduce the need for human labor at sea, and scale to hundreds or thousands of units. Our unique dual-domain approach—USVs paired with UUVs—unlocks “read and write” capabilities in the ocean: we can gather real-time data and directly intervene with robotics for tasks like seagrass restoration, infrastructure inspection, or defense and security missions. Our first commercial success has been restoring seagrass habitats at 10x lower cost and 100x faster than human-led methods. In just a year, on a team of 5, we’ve secured $1M in revenue from partners like the University of Western Australia, The Nature Conservancy, and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, proving both our technology and appetite in a fast moving market. In late 2023, we raised a $2M pre-seed led by Lowercarbon Capital, and we’re now seeing major interest in law enforcement, MPA protection, and subsea infrastructure—all leveraging the same robotics platform.
About
Fleets lack affordable, persistent surface-and-subsea coverage and ability to act; traffickers, saboteurs, and shadow assets are costing billions and risking lives. Western fleets have no current or upcoming solutions to match the volumes fielded by adversarial forces. We build USVs and UUVs that are integrated and built to a cost profile that enables the delivery of 1000s of platforms instead of 100s, and have both sensors and data processing abilities, but also can take robotic payloads to interact with things on the seabed, in water column, and on surface. Demos with ONR, and more commercial contracts across the US and Australia. We've deployed our AUVs commercially since late last year. USV TRL 5 - prototype tested, UUV TRL 7— prototypes proven at sea in multiple missions, docking autonomy entering TRL 6 this FY. Software Middleware TRL 4-5 Vertically-integrated products, copy-paste manufacturing, scale-driven engineering drives costs to a point where we can deliver an order of magnitude more units than anyone else. Active CRADA with NSWC; pursuing several DIU opportunities, teaming with primes e.g. SAAB Energy (offshore wind, oil&gas), subsea telecom cables, port/coastal security, IUUF, restoration Ex-McKinsey/Manna CEO, Ex-Manna/Spire CTO, Ex- Red Bull F1 Chief Engineer, 2 Navy veterans on team Legacy primes (Kongsberg, L3, Leidos, HII, etc.) are generally single-domain and 10-100× costlier; New players e.g. Saildrone, Anduril, Saronic are building to usurp primes—no focus on delivering fleet-scale, dual-domain persistence and building the 1 of 0 capability we are developing. Watch-stander / seabed-warfare lead. Commodores etc. They juggle many sparse, low-confidence tracks, few, and costly field assets; Ulysses gives them many autonomous assets, enabling high-fidelity information to drive responses and interventions in a way that's not possible now.
Problem
Coasts/subsea assets are exploited/damaged; fleets lack affordable, persistent, scalable surface-and-subsea surveillance and intervention solutions.