Autonomous robots collect the ocean floor. A cloud platform makes it usable. Ocean-Data-as-a-Service for defense, energy and maritime.
Water covers roughly 71 percent of the planet, and most of what lies beneath it has never been mapped in detail. Terradepth was built around that gap. Founded in 2018 by two former U.S. Navy SEALs, the company collects data from the ocean floor with autonomous underwater vehicles, then delivers it to customers through a cloud-native platform called Absolute Ocean. It describes the model as Ocean-Data-as-a-Service.
The idea is to treat the seabed the way modern software treats any other dataset - something you can upload, visualize, share, keep private, and analyze over time. Instead of a survey vessel gathering measurements that end up frozen on a hard drive, Terradepth's pitch is a continuous pipeline that runs from robotic collection at depth to processed maps sitting in a secure cloud environment.
The company operates out of the Austin area, with its headquarters in Cedar Park, Texas, and a second office in Panama City Beach, Florida. Its customers cluster in three sectors that all need to know what is on the ocean floor but rarely share the same room: defense, offshore energy, and the broader maritime and environmental world.
Terradepth is not the only company chasing subsea data, but its combination of owning both the robots and the software - the collection and the platform - is what it uses to distinguish itself from pure survey firms on one side and pure software vendors on the other.
Figures drawn from Terradepth's public materials and press coverage. Dive depth is as reported by the company; individual missions vary.
Navies need to understand contested undersea terrain - the founders felt this gap firsthand as SEALs. In 2026 the U.S. Navy added Absolute Ocean to its NIWC Atlantic rapid-deployment "Hopper," clearing a path to prototype agreements of up to 24 months.
Pipelines, cables and terminals need repeated seabed inspection. Terradepth won a five-year master services agreement with a major offshore-energy operator, starting with an LNG export terminal project in the Asia-Pacific region.
Survey, hydrography and environmental monitoring all depend on knowing the shape and state of the seabed - and detecting how it changes. Terradepth positions its data for marine-ecosystem protection alongside commercial use.
"To map, understand, and protect our ocean."
A secure, cloud-native platform to upload, store, visualize, share and analyze subsea data - with analytics, real-time collaboration and change detection. It runs on AWS GovCloud with FedRAMP and IL4/IL5 compliance, so classified naval data can live inside it.
Long-range autonomous submersibles - sometimes called "Buddy Drones" - that operate in synchronized tandem, mirroring how SEAL dive teams work: one unit dives while the other surfaces to recharge and relay data.
A vertically integrated offering that spans robotic collection through processed-data delivery in Absolute Ocean, sold as low-carbon survey work and subscription-style access rather than one-off survey reports.
Illustrative depth comparison. Terradepth figure is company-reported.
Most players own one half of the problem. Survey companies gather data but hand you a static deliverable. Software vendors give you a platform but no way to fill it. Terradepth owns both ends - the robots that collect and the cloud that serves - which lets it sell an ongoing data relationship rather than a single expedition.
The second differentiator is trust infrastructure. Building Absolute Ocean on AWS GovCloud with FedRAMP and IL4/IL5 clearances is unglamorous compliance work, but it is what allows classified defense data to sit alongside commercial energy data on the same platform.
Naval Academy graduate and former SEAL officer who spent time at McChrystal Group before starting Terradepth. He frames the company around a simple frustration: humanity has mapped Mars in higher resolution than most of its own seabed.
Fellow former Navy SEAL who, with Wolfel, previously founded the consulting firm Exbellum. Outside Terradepth he is also a co-founder of Desert Door, a Texas sotol distillery.
The culture reads straight from the founders' background: mission-first, security-by-design, with a stated aim of global impact and innovation at scale. The company describes its vehicles operating "just like SEAL dive teams" - a design metaphor borrowed directly from how the two founders once worked in the water.
Joe Wolfel and Judson Kauffman start the company in Texas to close the ocean-mapping gap.
Funding to build a fleet of autonomous deep-ocean data robots.
Forbes profiles the autonomous subs and the aim to map the world's oceans and open access to data.
Round co-led by Giant Ventures and Nimble Ventures funds charging systems and Absolute Ocean.
Cloud-native ocean-data-as-a-service platform debuts, delivering maps within 24 hours.
Enhanced analytics and change-detection demonstrated to defense customers.
Absolute Ocean enters the NIWC Atlantic Hopper; a five-year offshore-energy MSA is awarded.
Terradepth sits inside the fast-growing "blue tech" category - companies applying autonomy, robotics and cloud software to the ocean. On the collection side it shares a field with robotic-survey firms such as Ocean Infinity and Fugro, and with autonomous-vehicle makers like Saildrone, Bedrock Ocean and Kraken Robotics. On the data side it competes with anyone building geospatial platforms for the sea.
Its wager is that the two halves belong together. By owning the vehicles and the platform, Terradepth aims to be the layer where subsea data is not just gathered but continuously managed - what one industry write-up called an "ocean operating system." Whether that framing holds depends on how many customers want a single vendor for the whole pipeline versus best-of-breed pieces.
The near-term signals are commercial rather than hypothetical: a defense foothold through the Navy's rapid-acquisition channels and a multi-year revenue base in offshore energy. For a roughly 49-person company, those are the kinds of anchors that turn an ambitious mission into a business.
It collects ocean-floor data with autonomous underwater vehicles and delivers it through Absolute Ocean, a secure cloud platform - a model it calls Ocean-Data-as-a-Service for defense, energy and maritime customers.
Former U.S. Navy SEALs Joe Wolfel (CEO) and Judson Kauffman co-founded the company in 2018. It is based in the Austin/Cedar Park area of Texas.
Absolute Ocean is Terradepth's cloud-native platform for uploading, visualizing, sharing and analyzing subsea data, with analytics and change detection, running on AWS GovCloud with FedRAMP and IL4/IL5 compliance.
About $30 million total, including an $8 million seed round in 2019 and a $20 million Series A in 2022 co-led by Giant Ventures and Nimble Ventures.
Defense and national-security agencies including the U.S. Navy, offshore energy operators, and maritime, survey and environmental-monitoring organizations.