Three Startups Reinventing Critical Infrastructure
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What is Ulysses and how are autonomous underwater robots changing ocean exploration?
Last month, A16Z American Dynamism Films screened short films about three portfolio companies. Ulysses builds mission-critical underwater robots, Mariana Minerals applies modern technologies to the critical mineral sector, and Radiant seeks to mass-produce nuclear micro-reactors. Now, all three films are available on A16Z's YouTube channel. Before you check them out, today's episode highlights previous appearances by all three company founders. First up, Ulysses Willowryan joined MTS last April after their latest fundraise.
Super exciting. So for the audience, what exactly is Ulysses and what do you do?
Yes, at Ulysses we're building the ocean company. Essentially, if you have a difficult or tough problem to solve in the surface or subsea domain, we build autonomous robots that solve that problem. You know, the platform is basically autonomous surface vehicles combined with autonomous underwater vehicles built to be kind of cheap enough that you can kind of deploy them at scale over large swathes of the ocean, that they can work together autonomously to kind of solve some of the most critical tasks in our oceans. Like what kind of critical tasks? Yeah, sure. We have three main verticals that we operate in. We actually began, you know, because we were very interested in problems in the world of kind of conservation and nature.
And that was kind of the first use case we built our autonomous and water vehicle, Mako 4. So that is doing things like mapping coral reefs, mapping undersea ecosystems, using the vehicles to collect seeds and replant them in new locations. That was kind of like a first and early use case. Then, you know, after that, we kind of got pulled into our second vertical, which is what we call the commercial vertical. The commercial vertical, we're doing things like inspecting offshore wind platforms, inspecting subsea cables, doing repairs on undersea infrastructure. There's billions of dollars of assets in the Earth's oceans owned by energy companies and telecoms companies. So just basically, you know, protecting them and that sort of thing and keeping them up to date.
And then, you know, now actually as well, you know, we got pulled into the world of events by the U.S. Navy. They came to us when they heard about our underwater vehicle. They were extremely impressed with some of the specs and very dissatisfied with a lot of the existing options given by the Prime's Mako, our underwater vehicle, is truly best in class for its form factor, the small to medium size. So for them, they're interested in things like how can we find and remove mines? How can we gather intelligence under waters? And how can we do other relevant, important tasks like protecting ports, harbors, critical infrastructure, that sort of thing. All done off the same core tech platform, but it's pretty valuable and can be used across each.
One of the kind of similarities maybe to think about is people are building general purpose robotic form factors on land in the form of the humanoid. You can't just take a humanoid robot and throw it into the ocean. It just doesn't work that way. You have to have something that maybe looks a bit more like a fish or a shark. And that's the kind of platform that we're hoping to build for the ocean. Cool.
Have you ever played Subnautica? I haven't, but I have heard of it. That's incredible. It seems like Subnautica is like Ulysses the game. I also haven't played it. I don't really play that many video games, but it's just like, it's a game where you, I believe, are a guy controlling a submarine that's going around an alien ocean and exploring things and solving technical problems and fighting sea monsters.
Yeah, pretty much the average day in the life for a Ulysses forward deployed engineer.
What do you think about why there are so relatively few ocean companies? You know, there's a billion space companies, there's a billion satellite companies, there's a billion robot companies, but so few of them seem to be focused on the ocean. And is it just because space and land robots are sexier somehow?
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is Ulysses and how are autonomous underwater robots changing ocean exploration?
0:00–9:21
2
How does Ulysses tackle critical ocean tasks like infrastructure inspection, mine detection, and naval security?
9:21–20:36
3
Why has the ocean been under‑explored historically and how can the U.S. become the “SpaceX” of the seas?
20:36–29:25
4
What are critical minerals, why do they matter, and how is Mariana Minerals modernizing the supply chain?
29:25–39:26
5
How does Mariana Minerals use software‑first, vertically‑integrated technology to speed up mining projects?
39:26–49:41
6
What are the biggest bottlenecks—permitting, talent, and capital—in scaling U.S. mining and how can they be solved?
49:41–58:28
7
How do portable nuclear micro‑reactors from Radiant complement the grid and serve off‑grid markets?
58:28–1:06:49
8
What milestones must the nuclear industry hit for it to flourish in the United States?
1:06:49–1:15:08
Speakers
5 identifiedMore from The a16z Show
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