Ulysses Ecosystem Engineering is building autonomous ocean robots to restore seagrass and challenge Chinese illegal fishing at 10x lower cost

Summary

Willow O'Brien, co-founder of Ulysses Ecosystem Engineering, is building what he describes as the maritime equivalent of a general-purpose robotics platform. The core product is a 30-foot autonomous surface vessel that deploys and recovers swarms of autonomous underwater vehicles capable of sensing, mapping, imaging, and physical manipulation. The company claims its vehicles cost roughly 10 times less than comparable systems on the market, a gap O'Brien attributes to the absence of a DJI-equivalent in ocean robotics.

Origins and Early Revenue

The company was founded roughly two years ago after co-founder Jamie Weatherburn became obsessed with seagrass, a marine plant that supports 20% of the world's fish stocks, stores 20% of ocean carbon, and sequesters carbon at 35 times the rate of rainforest. Current restoration methods rely on manual diver planting, which Ulysses is replacing with autonomous underwater robots. The company generated $1 million in revenue in 2024 working with governments in Australia and the US, and is tracking toward over $2 million in 2025.

The Illegal Fishing Problem

Ulysses is in active discussions with partners about applying its platform to Chinese illegal fishing, which O'Brien characterizes as gray warfare. Chinese fleets are systematically depleting fisheries along South American and West African coastlines and around the Antarctic, targeting foundational species including krill. The enforcement gap is structural: the Argentine Navy, for example, is reportedly dedicating significant air force capacity to monitoring Chinese vessels but lacks the budget for adequate coverage assets. Coast guard cutters and P-3 Orion-class patrol aircraft cost tens of millions in capex and tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars per day to operate. Ulysses positions swarms of low-cost unmanned surface and subsurface vehicles as a scalable alternative that operates 24/7 with near-zero opex.

Defense Budget Positioning

The US defense budget is creating a direct procurement opportunity. O'Brien notes that $9 billion was announced this week for maritime unmanned systems, following a separate $4 billion allocation earlier in 2025. The strategic rationale on Capitol Hill, as O'Brien describes it, is that China produces hundreds of ships per year against a US rate of roughly one ship per year, making a symmetric shipbuilding response implausible. Autonomous unmanned systems are the asymmetric counter. Ulysses is currently in dialogue across three tracks simultaneously: DC policy relationships, direct engagement with Navy and DHS end users, and acquisition teams. O'Brien frames product-market fit with warfighters as the current primary focus, with formal programs of record as the longer-term target.

Platform Versatility

Beyond seagrass restoration and maritime domain awareness, O'Brien describes the platform as modular. Swapping robotic payloads and onboard fine-tuned models allows the same surface and subsurface vehicle stack to target invasive species such as lionfish in the Caribbean or purple sea urchins disrupting California kelp ecosystems. The underlying thesis is that ocean work remains where land-based industry was before mechanization, and that autonomous swarms represent the same structural shift seen in drone warfare and self-driving transport networks.