Ulysses Ecosystem Engineering raises $38M Series A from a16z to build autonomous underwater drones for defense and offshore energy
Key Points
- Ulysses Ecosystem Engineering closes $38M Series A from Andreessen Horowitz to scale production of modular autonomous underwater drones for offshore energy and defense markets.
- The company vertically integrates manufacturing—machining pressure vessels in-house, 3D-printing propellers, and assembling PCBs internally—compressing iteration cycles from three months to three days and slashing legacy hardware markups.
- Voorakkara argues the unmanned underwater capability gap between the U.S. and China is closeable compared to the 200-to-1 shipbuilding disadvantage, positioning the Mako as a defense solution for allied forces.
Summary
Read full transcript →Ulysses Ecosystem Engineering has closed a $38M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz to scale production of its autonomous underwater vehicles, the company's CEO Akhil Voorakkara announced.
The core product is a modular, torpedo-shaped drone — Ulysses calls its flagship model the Mako — designed to operate in two modes: fully autonomous with a preprogrammed path, or remotely piloted via a tethered live feed. The modularity is the pitch. Sensor payloads swap in and out depending on the mission: magnetometers for structural analysis, cameras for visual inspection, acoustic sonar for wide-area mapping in murky water, and robotic arms for physical intervention like scraping, cutting, or placing objects. The vehicle itself scales in length by stacking battery boxes, with range extending from roughly 20 nautical miles in a compact thruster configuration to 250 nautical miles in a stripped-down, high-efficiency tube form.
“We've just announced our series A led by Andreessen Horowitz, American Diamondism Fund at $38,000,000. We're building autonomous maritime robotics to solve the most critical challenges in what is arguably the most critical domain on the planet. You look at shipbuilding where China is ahead of The US by 200 times — unmanned underwater vehicles, the gap isn't that big. We're the ones closing it.”
Commercial and defense markets
Target customers span offshore oil and gas, renewables, subsea telecoms infrastructure, and port security. Ulysses has already deployed the Mako on around a dozen commercial missions. The defense angle is newer: Voorakkara says the company has spent the last six months bringing its commercially deployed hardware in front of allied forces, pitching the same vehicles as a way to close capability gaps in the unmanned underwater domain. He points to Chinese shipbuilding outnumbering U.S. shipbuilding by roughly 200 to 1, and argues the gap in unmanned underwater vehicles is comparatively small and closeable.
Vertical integration
The strategic foundation is aggressive in-housing. Voorakkara describes finding extreme markups on legacy maritime hardware — paying $150,000 for sensors built around a $10 microcontroller and 20-year-old technology — and deciding to manufacture most components internally. Metal pressure vessels and structural parts are machined on-site. Plastic fairings and propellers are 3D-printed. PCB assembly is handled in-house using automated lines, with raw components sourced and placed internally. The result, Voorakkara says, is an iteration cycle that compresses what previously took three months into three days, and a cost structure that should support meaningful scale.
The a16z backing puts institutional weight behind a bet that the underwater domain is about to undergo the same cost and capability shift that already played out in aerospace and on-land robotics.
Every deal, every interview. 5 minutes.
TBPN Digest delivers summaries of the latest fundraises, interviews and tech news from TBPN, every weekday.