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

given the friction with Microsoft. Um like they don't have a a core cloud that they're super close with.

they're not like there's they need to both try to lower their cost for infrance um as well like that maybe was a factor behind the because the 03 had a big price drop that might have been TPU related I don't know um pure speculation but like Google has TPUs and they can serve Gemini really cheap and really well really fast um if openi wants to compete at that level they kind of have to consider all options Yep.

Makes sense. Well, great day to have you pop on. Yeah, thanks so much for hopping. Knowing knowing how knowing how things are unfolding, we'll probably we'll probably ping you to jump on again later this week. So, stay ready. Great to have you. Hot topic. Cheers. Yeah. Bye. I'll be right back.

And we got another Will coming in the studio. It's Will day on TVPN. We got Will from Ulisses coming in. Not talking about AI, talking about the ocean, talking about boats, talking about the Gundo, military. Who knows what we'll talk about, but we will talk about the origin of his company. How you doing, Will?

I'm good, John. How are you getting on? I'm great. Good to have you on the show, finally. Uh would you mind kicking us off with just an introduction on yourself and your company? Yeah, absolutely. Um uh my name is, uh Willow O'Brien, um one of the founders of Ulyses.

We are building um autonomous vehicles to solve the most critical tasks in the oceans. Um so in practicality of what that looks like um we build an autonomous surface vehicle. It's a 30foot uh vessel that launches and recovers swarms of uh autonomous underwater vehicles.

Um these underwater vehicles can read as well as write. They can sense. They can take maps. They can take images and collect data. But they can also do uh physical manipulation as well and robotics. they can they can do kind of whatever you want, whatever you want to task them to.

And uh we make both these vehicles probably about 10 times cheaper than anyone else in the world. So while some people are building maybe humanoid robots is a general purpose robotics platform for land, we're building um the maritime equivalent of that.

Humans obviously are not evolved for for land um so or for the ocean. So we need we need something for that. So um that's a bit about us. We're based in San Francisco as you can tell. I'm not um an American. I'm Irish. Um, and some of our founders founding team are Irish and Scottish.

And um, yeah, that's uh, it's a bit about us. How did you settle like Yeah. Yeah. What was the inciting uh, like problem set like how how did you land on this industry to work on? Like what what what got you in the industry? Yeah, good question.

Uh so about two years ago, one of my co-founders, um a crazy Scottish man called Jamie Weatherburn was on a search trip and uh he got talking to a biologist working on this plant called seagrass. He'd never heard about seaggrass before. I had never heard about seaggrass really before despite growing up by the seaside.

And uh he became captivated by it. And then he like uh you know like uh any good uh autistic engineer does. He goes down a rabbit hole learning about it and telling all his friends about it and telling us about it. Um seagrass is this wonder plant in the oceans that supports 20% of the world's fish stocks.

Um it um holds about 20% of the the carbon in the ocean as well. Underneath it it's 35 times better than rainforest or removing carbon. But it wasn't in Finding Nemo, so nobody knows about it really.

Um so we kind of discovered this and he you know in learning about it he realized like it's dying off all around the world and um it's basically very time intensive and expensive to uh bring it back to restore it and uh basically the methods people are doing to restore it um are manual.

They're divers going down with their hands and they're manually planting seeds and um takes a lot of time takes a lot of money and it's it's not really working.

and he kind of had, you know, we kind of had this insight then that like while we've mechanized, you know, nearly every kind of form of large scale outdoor work on on land, that really hasn't happened in the oceans yet. Um like nobody's built the tractor equivalent for the oceans.

Um and that really like a lot of the kind of tasks in the ocean um whether it be in this you know narrow uh weird wonderful domain of seaggrass restoration or um in the the world of defense or in the commercial industry if you're building infrastructure we're still sending down tons of divers um to do like manual tasks that really just like make absolutely no sense.

They're dangerous. They're expensive. Um, so we kind of started in this like world of crass. Got very obsessed with that and and had a very successful kind of first year just doing autonomous seagrass restoration services for for different governments around the world, working with governments in Australia and the US.

We did a million dollars in revenue last year and we're on track for for over two this year. Congratulations.

Yeah, when I met when I met when I met Will and I heard this like initial wedge, I was like this is so fascinating, interesting, like find like the most weird obscure market that no one would ever think of and just absolutely dominate it and then use that to earn the right to do many other things.

And I think I introduced Will to like 10 seed funds in like 30 minutes at one point um without getting the opt-in from Will. I was just like people need to meet you and then within a few days I people were committing. So that's awesome.

Yeah, I learned to scuba dive off the coast of Catalina Island and when I was I was like 15 when I was doing it and it was um had all this amazing tall California kelp and I went back like a couple years ago and you you've heard the story there was like an invasive kelp species that came over from Japan I believe on like a shipping container shipping shipping tanker and it completely wiped it out and it looks completely different and I I don't know if it's particularly important to restore the original California kelp.

I imagine it probably is in some abstract sense, but uh it was just a bummer as a as a scuba diver to be like, it's not what I remember, which was like swimming through this beautiful forest. It's just kind of these tumble weeds now. Yeah, it's man, it's those purple urchins. Um it's it's that's it.

What happens a big a big way of uh like that invasive species are transmitted in the mo ocean is like a a t like a a ship will like um you know be in in the in the in Tokyo um in the port and then it'll fill up its it's like its ballast.

So it'll pull in water and when it's pulling in water it'll take in fish or urchins in this instance and fill up and then it'll go out to sea and then it'll land in San Diego or San Francisco in the port and then it'll release them all. So, this happened as well with lion fish um in the Caribbean um in Miami.

And uh uh yeah, those lionfish are gnarly. They're just like chewing up the coral everywhere. Um I I went I went clawing them once. You get I was in in the in the Cayman Islands uh working there one summer and we were getting paid like spear fish these lion fish. Yeah. I mean, they taste great. They taste great.

That is the good side of the lion fish is that you can just hunt them relentlessly because no one cares about them because they're so invasive and they're like pretty fun to shoot and you shoot them with and you can make leather wallets with them as well making line fish leather wallets and you're like I'm actually I'm hunting but I'm saving the world.

Yeah. Yeah. But you Yeah. It's like pigs in Texas. I mean it's actually a problem and and it needs to be like really dealt with. But as a as a consumer of hunting it's fantastic. Oh, it's great.

But yeah, these are these are good examples of tasks again that are just like still today it's like Irish dudes with spears going down just like yeah real realistically there aren't that many people that want to go spear fishing line fishing all day every day forever because like the like yeah a couple tourists doing it once a weekend is not going to do the job.

So yeah, you need automation 100%. Yeah. And like we Yeah. So that's the kind of these are the types of this is like you know the same platform that we built for Seagrass. It's a service vehicle.

underwater vehicle with a different robotic payload and a different model on board fine-tuned on finding urchins or finding uh line fish. You could, you know, we could have like a service that just like solve this problem for someone. Uh what's the origin of the name?

Uh yeah, it was uh there was there was kind of a few things. I mean, as most great ideas, it was uh conceived uh in the midst of drinking a rake points. Um and uh but we were we were me and my co-founders were out. We were like thinking about different names for the business.

And then we were thinking about that um 1997 animated movie the uh called Treasure Treasure Planet um where uh these like people that go on these this quest in the submarine um to to kind of save the world and uh they uh they we looked it up and it was called the submarine in that movie was called Ulyses.

And then interestingly when we got our first office, we got our first office in Dublin just after we raised the the preede in um October uh 24 uh or 23. Um and uh we got our first office and to to the left of us was the house that James Joyce grew up in.

I sorry the Ulyses have the Irish connection as well which is you know another reason we chose it but to the left of us there was a house that house that James Joyce grew up in.

to the right of us was the house or the museum of literature Ireland where the first uh copy of Ulyses is kept and uh in the in the park opposite our street just there's a big huge statue of James Joyce with a quote from Ulyses there um and uh that also like about a week later my mom found a photo of me at home next to like a picture an extra like a James Joyce quote and there's like a quote underneath it all all this kind of happened in the same week so it's kind of like okay we're keeping it now yeah because the nominative determinism here is that I mean the story of Ulisses Adysius is like a 10-year grind and it's like absolutely miserable like facing the Cyclops and the getting enchanted by Cersei and the sirens and like I imagine that if things if nominative determinism holds the sirens for you are you won't be getting a quick buck in an aqua hire at meta anytime soon.

You're going to be at this for a very long time. I'm rooting for you and I think I think you will ultimately ultimately be successful, but uh buckle up. You're going to go on an entrepreneurial journey if the name holds. What uh who are your who are your biggest uh Irish Irish tech uh heroes?

What makes the Irish so so so infatuated with technology? Um I mean what makes Irish people so infatuated? I mean, you guys are well aware of the Hibernian conspiracy, of course. As uh as two uh I I don't know what you guys have to say about your uh the the accusations that you know that Mr. Kugan and Mr.

Hayes are at the core of this uh cabal of Irish people in technology or Irish beating allegations. Never beating the allegations. What about Pachy McCormack? What about Molly O'Shea? What about all these people with Irish surnames? What are they doing?

Why do they Why do they all suddenly have media programs all follow each other. Why does Apple doicile all of their cash there? It's a good question. Yeah. You think you think it's the Rothschilds, you know, running the money supply actually. Exactly. Sashi Satoshi Nakamoto. Nakamoto is actually an Irish name.

The old father on on Nakamoto. So there's Oh, interesting. It goes It goes deeper. It goes deeper. And mine my my favorite Irish technologist would probably be George B, the inventor of Boolean algebra. Oh, there you go. Foundation for modern computing. Yeah. I didn't realize he was on deep cut.

Uh yeah, and then modern modern ones on Mab's a good friend as well. Big fan of everything they're doing. It's very very inspiring um to see to see someone like that and obviously the Collisons as well. Um but I feel I feel the CO's everyone appreciates the Cson.

I don't think I know people appreciate the the great business that the guys at Intercom are building and I know you had him on the show recently and we just partnered with him. Yeah, he's a sponsor now. Ring the bell. Ring the bell. Yeah. Yeah. You can have in your tinfoil hat uh conspiracy.

There's definitely a line between us and own and then us and intercom and own appeared on the show. He just happens to pay us through Stripe, you know. Yeah. So, um uh I I had a random question for you um that I'm sure you have strong opinions on.

Uh, every now and then I'll see a video that's off the like coast of Chile and there's just like just fleets of fishing vehicles as far as Yeah, I can see what's going on down there. Um, is there any solution to it? I'm sure you've gotten asked that. Is is your guys' tech something that could help address that? It is.

Yeah, we're speaking to some partners about about kind of supporting on this problem right now. I think there's like two aspects to this problem.

So yeah, like characterizing the problem um the Chinese are um you know destroying um many oceans around the world, particularly in countries where they basically just don't have the money to monitor um their their seas and enforce marine protected areas and these sorts of things.

So up and down the coastlines of South America, this is like the single biggest thing that like South American navies are spending time on right now. West Africa as well um is just being um completely like the fisheries there are being completely decimated in and around the Antarctic as well.

There's massive krill populations and krill populations are they're this kind of foundational species for a lot of other um marine life in the ocean. You take away the krill which is the kind of bottom of the food chain.

You know it knocks all the way up to the to the whales and then you lose the whales as well and nobody wants to lose the whales. Um so that's kind of like characterizing the problem. Okay, the reason the problem exists is okay two reasons.

natives that basically just can't cover enough area um and get maritime domain awareness. They just can't they don't have enough assets. Um you know that's part of the problem and there's like a governance aspect of the problem as well, right? So okay, how does China get away with it?

Well, so you know the the people responsible for kind of looking after um you know law on the high seas quite often is what you'd call the flag state. So where the boat is registered, all these boats are registered.

Chinese Chinese kind of like knows this is their kind of they use this as what you know you'd call like gray warfare. Um it's kind of similar with the critical undersea infrastructure. You know, it's not really officially the Chinese state, but it may as well be because they're not like prosecuting on it.

Um so uh on the on the technical side I suppose like the the problem here is like the again the paradigm of of um maritime operations is kind of you know is is stuck and it's it's broken right it's you know you could probably characterize it we call it this the heavy tech bottleneck right so basically any mission you want to do in the ocean kind of has like a few um features around it like it it generally uh you know relies on these expensive manned assets so these could be airplanes like P3 3 Orions or they could be um you know expensive uh national security cutters.

These big coast guard cutters, these 100 foot 200 foot long vehicles and uh these cost like tens of millions um to you know in capex and then the running cost for them on a day is like tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to run daily.

And then you use these things as like a platform on which you put sensors um uh or you you use like an unmanned system and that's kind of like what it relies on. So, it's like small numbers of very expensive assets.

Whereas the way we're seeing autonomy going around the world, whether it be like self-driving car transport network, like self-driving cars or drones in Ukraine, is like we're moving away from these small networks of exclusive vehicles to large networks of small autonomous vehicles, right?

So, it's like going from buses and trains to like a network of Whimos or Tesla robo taxis. Uh, you know, on the battlefield, it's moving away from fighter jets to like a bajillion Neros drones. um you know it's like it's like this is like just the way we're going. But that hasn't really happened yet in the ocean.

And the limiting factor we think is that um basically drones are still like crazy expensive in the ocean. Unmanned systems are crazy expensive. Even if you want to buy, you know, the the sexiest unmanned surface vehicle, you're still paying hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Underwater vehicles, you're spending hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars. Um but we haven't had like a DJI yet for the ocean, right? We haven't had someone that really like completely collapsed costs to the degree that you can buy fleets instead of single units.

So again, that's kind of like what we're trying to position ourselves as is like this person who you can buy, if you're like the Argentinian Navy and your fisheries just getting obliterated, you can buy like a swarm of um surface and subc vehicles to kind of solve the problem for the fraction of a cost you purchase a MAN asset for that works 24/7 um with zero opex just controlled over scom.

How much is the problem that people, you know, these governments don't know something is happening or they know but it's 30 boats that have showed up somewhere and they're just going to fish, you know, and and basically decimate all life until they're maybe pushed away by a boat.

like what what is I I can see the technology angle of of getting just like more coverage uh and knowing more about what's happening in these different areas, but it feels like there needs to be um more will from the government as well to just say like we're not going to let this happen.

Yeah, I mean the the the will is like certainly there.

It's just they don't they don't have the budget on current assets like it like you know like some of these like if you want to buy more of these like um like boats that they would need or these planes that they need to like survey or or get like awareness on the area like these are like tens of millions if not hundreds of millions for some of these assets and the Argentinian Navy just doesn't have that kind of money.

Um so they know that in general there's a problem there but they just don't have enough assets out there. Um I mean it's crazy that like most of the Argentinian air force's time is now spent on looking for Chinese ships over their waters. It's it's um so it's like they just yeah they don't have the money.

So yeah, you really do need cheaper solutions for for these types of folks. What other what other stories are you are you tracking or kind of problems globally that that you think you're I want to hear about like this big ship building bill. Like how does the new budget fit in? What are you tracking in DC?

I know you're still an early stage company, but I imagine that um the the long term has to be figure out a way to get to program program of record, work with the DoD, but break it down. How are you actually thinking about that? Because it feels like there's a lot of different applications. You got to stay dual use.

You got to stay agile while you're building the underlying tech. But what are you what are you looking at in DC? Yeah, like for us on the kind of um government BD side, there's there's kind of three plates that were always spinning, right?

There's like the the DC plate, there's the like operator or war fighter end user state, and then there's like the acquisition st uh teams play. So, we're always just like in constant dialogue and with like you know different members of these these three um these bodies.

So, yeah, the the the most recent um you know, appropriation for for defense is very interesting. Um there's uh many many billions going to uh maritime unmanned systems particularly surface vehicles and underwater vehicles.

I think there's a general recognition um on the hill right now that like you know you know the Chinese are producing like hundreds of ships per per year and uh you know US is producing one ship per year and that like trying to build beat them on ship building is like probably not feasible.

We're not going to ramp up that production that quickly. We need to just play a different game. And I think they're seeing like unmanned systems as like the the way to that. Um so um yeah, just this week it was announced again another um nine billion.

Um you know, a few months ago as well, there was another four billion allocated to this line item. So um yeah, they're the things that that that we're tracking.

There's some some existing um programmer records that are already set up that um that we're, you know, in the kind of running to um to kind of to kind of challenge for and uh get a get a position on.

And uh there's also talk of some new ones being set up for these some of these newer categories of vehicles that haven't been developed yet.

But yeah, out of the three plates that we're spinning right now, it's you know, generally that you know, you you do want to have like um a presence in DC kind of like at this early stage. It's not the main focus.

The main focus is refining our product with the end user, understanding what their needs are and building building to spec. Um so that's kind of like our main focus right now and spoken to speak to some some folks in Navy about that.

um and uh members of DHS and Department of Homeland Security and other other groups as well on this. Um so they're kind of our main focus right now in that front. Probability P Atlantis, what's the probability that you guys find it? Uh I think I think uh very high. Um I think it's probably in very high.

Do you think that Atlantis exists? Yes. I think there's like two very good uh candidates for Atlantis. Um there is one um structure in Moritania in um modern modern day Moritania called the recap structure.

Um so the recap structure is basically three concentric rings in um the middle of the desert with salt deposits between each of them. It looks man-made. You can see it from space. You can look up the recap structure or IC. And uh the only des the only description we have from of of Atlantis is actually from Plato.

Plato describes it as being this like walled city full of gold with you know built with the kind of this city hall being at the middle of three concentric rings.

The ring you know the rings were each filled with um seawater and um modernday Mortania is also where um the richest uh the richest uh man that ever lived uh existed. So there was this Moritanian king who had um more gold.

he would have been the I think the you know the first trillionaire um and uh yeah that's for and uh and he uh and and and so that that's the gold part of it the reconstruction of three rings is that part of it and then there's also these all these like salt strayations all the way from the coastline in West Africa to this location so it's kind of the theory that there was this um there was this uh apocalyptic event about 11,500 years ago called the related to the comet hitting the earth and uh Atlantis was there there was a great flood and uh this this city was um lost.