marine-robotics
(7)
BeeX
The Singapore deeptech cutting the tether on underwater inspection - autonomous drones that survey ships, wind farms and seabeds without divers, ROV pilots or a support vessel overhead.
RanMarine Technology
RanMarine Technology is a Rotterdam-based marine robotics company that builds autonomous, electric aquadrones - led by its flagship WasteShark - to remove floating plastic, debris and biomass from ports, marinas, harbours and inland waterways while collecting water-quality data. Founded in South Africa in 2015 and re-incorporated in the Netherlands, the company sells hardware plus a connected data platform to ports, municipalities, water authorities, facilities firms and NGOs across several continents.
Sea Machines Robotics
Sea Machines Robotics is a Boston-based company building autonomous command, control, and perception systems for commercial and defense vessels. Its products - including the SM300 autonomous control system, the SM200 wireless remote helm, and the AI-Ris computer-vision sensor - let workboats, tugs, survey craft, and unmanned surface vehicles operate remotely or autonomously while improving safety and crew productivity. Founded in 2015 by marine engineer Michael G. Johnson, the company has deployed systems on four continents and works with customers spanning shipping, spill response, government, and the military.
Terradepth
Terradepth is an Austin-area ocean-data and subsea-intelligence company founded in 2018 by former U.S. Navy SEALs Joe Wolfel and Judson Kauffman. It pairs autonomous underwater vehicles that collect seabed data with Absolute Ocean, a cloud-native, government-grade platform for storing, visualizing, sharing and analyzing that data. Marketed as Ocean-Data-as-a-Service (ODaaS), Terradepth serves defense, offshore energy and maritime customers who need to map, understand and protect the roughly three-quarters of the planet that lies underwater.
Joe Wolfel
Joe Wolfel is the co-founder and CEO of Terradepth, a Cedar Park, Texas company building an ocean data ecosystem that pairs autonomous underwater robots with a cloud platform to turn fragmented subsea readings into decision-ready intelligence for commercial and government customers. A U.S. Naval Academy graduate and former Navy SEAL, Wolfel started the company in 2018 with fellow SEAL Judson Kauffman after concluding that humanity's ignorance of the ocean was a solvable data problem. He frames Terradepth less as a robotics maker and more as an 'Ocean Operating System,' shifting the maritime industry from buying platforms to buying the intelligence those platforms generate.
Ulysses
Ulysses is a San Francisco ocean-robotics company building low-cost, modular autonomous underwater vehicles that replace multimillion-dollar ships and human divers. Founded in 2023, it started by using robots to replant declining seagrass meadows 100x faster than volunteer divers, then extended the same modular platform to offshore wind surveys, subsea infrastructure inspection, and maritime security. Its flagship Mako AUV dives 5,000 feet for up to 72 hours and starts at roughly $50,000 - about 50x cheaper than legacy systems - and the company raised a $38M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz in April 2026.
Michael G. Johnson
Michael G. Johnson is the founder, president and CTO of Sea Machines Robotics, a Boston company building autonomous control and perception systems for commercial ships and workboats. A Texas A&M marine engineer who spent two decades in offshore oil, heavy-lift ocean transport and salvage at Crowley and TITAN Salvage, Johnson started Sea Machines in 2015 after seeing how avoidable human error was on an Arctic oil-spill response job. In November 2024 he handed the CEO seat to David 'Chip' Wasson and moved into a technology and product role focused on defense and international expansion.