Ulysses began with an absurdly hard mission: replant seagrass that once covered huge swaths of the seafloor with robotics. While the market for seagrass restoration is emerging and small (today), the problem demands almost everything that is hard about the ocean at once: subsea presence, physical manipulation, and persistent coverage. The platform the team engineered for the task is inherently extensible, flexing into many use-cases: infrastructure monitoring, offshore energy, coastal security, scientific research, and even treasure hunting.

Ulysses is building small, autonomous underwater vehicles that aim to outperform incumbents at a fraction of the cost. Through low-cost, modular and vertically integrated hardware, Ulysses customers deploy dense fleets instead of one-off centralised vessels. The team can iterate a full system for a specific use-case in weeks, which means compared customers can deploy continuous fleets, rather than schedule sporadic one-off expeditions.

When we first met Will, Akhil, Colm, and Jamie, they showed us their shrine to Steve Irwin, Ulysses’ patron saint. Steve’s larrikin spirit is in the company's DNA - an irreverence towards what others say is impossible, an appetite for hard and unglamorous work, and the conviction that if no one else is mad enough to step into the water first, they will.

The ocean covers over 70% of the planet, carries over 80% of global trade, underpins trillions in economic activity, and holds extraordinary biodiversity - yet we still treat it largely as a void: unobserved, untapped, and largely unprotected. Each vehicle Ulysses delivers is a new node in the network for learning and action, providing leverage that opens access and operational capability in the vastness of the great blue frontier.