Ulysses

Ulysses Ecosystem Engineering builds autonomous underwater vehicles, robotics and AI systems for ocean work, operating publicly as Ulysses / The Ocean Company. Its first vehicle, Mako, is a modular AUV rated to 5,000 ft with 72 hours of endurance and a 200 lb payload, paired with Kraken, an autonomous launch, recovery and recharge system that lets missions run fully remotely. The company began with seagrass restoration — using robotic drills to map seafloor and plant seeds at roughly a tenth of manual cost — with partners including The Nature Conservancy, the University of Western Australia, the Great Barrier Reef Foundation and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. It raised a $2M pre-seed led by Lowercarbon Capital in 2024 and a $38M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz in April 2026 to scale production for offshore energy and defense customers.

Ulysses builds low-cost, swarm-ready modular AUVs with integrated surface and subsea capability that it markets as up to 50x cheaper than legacy subsea providers, packing more onboard compute than comparable small and medium vehicles so autonomy runs at the edge.