Ocean tech is decades behind.

But that is changing thanks to founders like Will O’Brien.

You might’ve seen him on X where he’s amassed 8,000 followers, gotten shoutouts from the Technology Brothers and Lulu Cheng Meservey, and shares his mission for revolutionizing maritime autonomy.

Will founded Ulysses Ecosystem Engineering, a startup that restores seagrass - a keystone species that fosters biodiversity and absorbs carbon. Ulysses designs, produces, and deploys autonomous underwater robots that restore seagrass ecosystems without the need for large human teams.

Ulysses has gone from 0 to $1 million in revenue in 12 months. The company is based in San Francisco and raised a $2 million Pre-Seed from Lowercarbon Capital in November 2024. They are hiring.

You can find Will on X and LinkedIn, and check out more from Ulysses here.

It was a pleasure to chat with him and I hope you enjoy his insights.

Table of Contents:

1. The Mission

2. The Opportunity

3. The Product

4. The Market

1) The Mission

What inspired you to build Ulysses Ecosystem Engineering?

WO: The ocean is a vital ecosystem. Three billion people rely on it as their primary source of protein, one billion as their primary source of income, and it harbors most of the planet’s biodiversity. However, it faces immense stress from threats like warming, acidification, and pollution. At Ulysses, our mission is to reverse these trends by restoring ocean ecosystems, starting with seagrass restoration.

Why did you choose seagrass restoration as your focus?

WO: Seagrass restoration is critical but hugely expensive. It’s 35 times more effective than rainforests at removing carbon and offers biodiversity benefits on par with coral reefs. Plus, seagrass covers vast areas and can be planted using automated systems—like how we plant grass on land. At Ulysses, we’re automating restoration to make it faster, cheaper, and scalable. Nobody else is tackling this at the scale it demands.

2) The Opportunity

What drives demand for ecosystem restoration?

WO: Governments are stepping up with ambitious restoration policies. The EU just introduced the Nature Restoration Law which mandates restoring 30% of degraded ecosystems by 2030 and 100% by 2050. In other places, like some Australian states, if you harm an ecosystem—say, during port development—you’re required to restore four times the area you damaged. The compliance market for biodiversity is huge, even larger than the voluntary carbon market.

How big is the opportunity?

WO: We view seagrass as being step 1 on a path to building a defining maritime autonomy business. We’ve built a low-cost, dual domain (surface and underwater), fully autonomous, hardware + software solution that is applicable to many different problems. These might be maritime domain awareness, illegal fishing, defense, or invasive species. Any problem that requires scale, full autonomy, and physical manipulation is relevant for us.

3) The Product

How does Ulysses scale ocean restoration efforts?

WO: We’ve built modular, autonomous, maritime drones. They plant and monitor ecosystems without boats or large human teams, cutting costs by a factor of 10. The drones are flexible and reconfigurable for different tasks, and they’re designed to make large-scale restoration viable for the first time.

Ulysses reached $1 million in revenue within a year, how did you achieve this and what’s been the biggest challenge?

WO: Commercial opportunity has come because we have a product that is differentiated, unique, and gets people excited. But engineering in the ocean is always difficult. Building as quickly and cheaply as we aim to, while including all the capabilities we want, has been the biggest challenge.

4) The Market

Why is now the right time to build Ulysses?

WO: There’s a convergence of three trends:

1. Maritime technology has lagged behind other sectors like space and auto.

2. A wide array of technologies are becoming cheaper and more efficient - motors (thanks to aerial drones), batteries (thanks to EVs), sensors (thanks to autonomous vehicles), real-time communication (thanks to Starlink). These are technologies we use to build our systems.

3. Policies like the EU Nature Restoration Law and other government restoration initiatives are driving enormous demand for ocean restoration.

All these factors make now the perfect time for Ulysses.

Thanks for Reading!

• Have a founder you’d like to highlight in a Q&A? Let me know here.

• Interested in industrial tech? Reach out on X and LinkedIn where I share other informational content.

• Anything else on your mind? Reply to this email to say hi! I’d love to hear from you.

-Greg