SpaceX of the sea
- Stephen McBride
- a few seconds ago
- 7 min read
The ocean is the new frontier
Could America have won WWII without Henry Kaiser? Thankfully we’ll never need to know.
Kaiser was a heroic industrialist, as detailed in the must-read book Freedom’s Forge.
His teams built nearly one-third of the entire US naval fleet. To do that, they built ten shipyards from scratch, which formed the beating heart of FDR’s “Arsenal of Democracy.”
Kaiser was a bulldozer. When steel mills couldn’t keep up, he built his own. When building ships took too long, he reinvented the whole process with pre-fabrication and assembly lines. He slashed the time to build a military cargo ship from 220 days down to as little as 4… even though he’d previously never built a ship in his life!
That spirit of speed, ingenuity, and “just do it” let America build overwhelming amounts of stuff to win the war.
Today, we’re in desperate need of a new Henry Kaiser.
Did you know China now has 250X more shipbuilding capacity than the US? Imagine what Kaiser would think.
But just like in 1940, we’re on the cusp of a technological revolution. The ocean is going autonomous. This is America’s opportunity to lead again. Not by matching China’s scale. That’s impossible. But by rewriting the playbook.
The new Arsenal of Democracy won’t run on just steel and cement. It’ll run on AI and automation, built by “new Kaisers.” In today’s Diary we’ll meet three of them and their companies.
An ancient Athenian General once said:
“He who commands the sea has command of everything.”
Still true today:
Roughly 90% of global trade moves by sea
$10 trillion worth of financial transactions move through thick undersea cables each day
Undersea cables deliver over 95% of global data, including emails.
Ocean dominance allows a country to impose its values on the world. If threatened by a free and open internet, a navally dominant China could shut it down.
Think I’m being hyperbolic? China just unveiled a cable-cutting robotic arm capable of severing fortified subsea cables at depths of 4,000 meters.
Think about that. If enough undersea cables were cut, we’d have a worldwide internet blackout. Stock markets would freeze. ATMs would stop working. Total chaos.
This picture should give us all pause:
China controls over half of global shipbuilding capacity. It can launch new ships in weeks. We take years.
And remember, we won WWII by outproducing everyone else. Today, that advantage overwhelmingly belongs to China.
There is no rationally optimistic take on that. It’s bad.
Thankfully, American entrepreneurs are stepping up to change it.
Keep in mind, just as flying drones are redefining land warfare, drone boats will redefine oceanic warfare. It’s already begun.
Although Ukraine lacks a navy, it controls the Black Sea using autonomous and cheap hardware, including its “Sea Baby” drone boats. Ukraine has sunk or disabled a third of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and forced remaining ships back.
The US Navy aims to have 130 unmanned ships in the water this year. Within five years I bet we’ll have 100X, even 1,000X more.
The following three companies will build them.
What’s the next billion-dollar Irish startup?
My money is on Ulysses.
You’ve heard of “carbon capture” pulling carbon out of the air. Well, Ulysses is a step ahead. Its autonomous underwater drones plant seagrass on the ocean floor, which absorbs carbon 35X more efficiently than rainforests.
Ulysses is building fleets of robo-gardeners, healing our seas and cooling the planet. It’s already inked contracts in Florida, Virginia, and Western Australia. In its first year the company earned $1 million in revenue – a rare level of traction for a frontier startup.
I met Ulysses founder Will O’Brien in San Francisco in April. And we caught up recently on the ROS podcast.
Will told me, “Underwater work is too dangerous, expensive, and difficult to do manually. So much of it doesn’t get done today.”
Ulysses’ drones unlock this new frontier. It uses a surface mothership to launch underwater “daughter” drones. The daughter drones descend, do their thing, and then dock back with the mothership.
Planting seagrass is just Ulysses’ opening act.
Big Tech spends tens of billions of dollars laying undersea cables to carry their data. Of the 550 or so cables around the world, there’s a disruption roughly once every three days.
Each time, they have to call in specialized dive teams. They descend to the seafloor, sometimes thousands of feet deep, to manually fix the issue.
There’s no way the future of undersea cable management looks like this:
In the near future swarms of drones will patrol the seabed looking for problems. When they spot something, they’ll call in specialized welding or cutting drones to fix it.
Ulysses’ goal is to be the “Android” platform of subsea drones. Its drones will be able to police cables and energy pipelines, and to guard underwater data centers (Microsoft is building one).
Imagine the defense applications? Fleets of underwater drones will patrol America’s shoreline. Think the Coast Guard, everywhere, all at once.
Ulysses’ drones could also do stealth reconnaissance behind enemy lines. They could silently “park” on the seabed between missions and remain undetectable, springing into action when needed.
As Will told me, “The ocean is the wild west. It’s shockingly under-monitored, and Ulysses wants to change that.”
Tucked inside their San Francisco workshop…
The founders of Poseidon Aerospace are building the future of ocean warfare with their bare hands.
The last golden age of bold ideas was 1950–1980. During the Cold War, the US Air Force tested flying saucers. NASA explored nuclear-powered spacecraft.
And the Soviets built ekranoplans, which looked like this:
Part ship, part aircraft, these “sea skimmers” ride a cushion of air just above the water, taking advantage of a phenomenon called ground effect. The result is something that moves like a fighter jet, but skims like a speedboat. Because it flies so low, it avoids radar detection.
Poseidon is transforming the ekranoplan from a Cold War relic into a high-speed workhorse using modern materials and automation.
Its first product is Seagull, a sleek 13 ft. craft with a 120-mile range. It operates fully autonomously, no human needed, fitted with Starlink internet.
I visited David and his team in their warehouse and got my hands on Seagull.
Seagull flies in the goldilocks zone. Too low for radar. Too high for sonar. And it doesn’t need runways, ports, or even roads to take off and land.
In Greece, delivery firms are exploring how Seagull can ship packages to islands without airports.
As we toured the warehouse I spotted a mattress on the floor in a side room. A telltale sign of late nights and dedication.
During Poseidon’s first demo at 1am in a slimy duck pond, David had to strip naked and dive into the freezing sludge to salvage the prototype. Sounds like something Kaiser would do.
Poseidon’s approach is smart. First, make money delivering stuff in places like Greece. Then aim for military contracts. That’s how you build wartime tools on spec.
Poseidon’s now working on Heron. It’s a 50 ft. version of Seagull, capable of carrying two tons over 1,500 miles. Poseidon hopes to have it flying within two years.
America’s hottest defense tech company is…
Saronic.
Founded three years ago by ex-Navy SEAL Dino Mavrookas, Saronic is building fleets of autonomous ships.
Saronic’s goal is to churn out thousands of unmanned vessels, rolling off a highly automated shipyard called Port Alpha. Think Henry Kaiser meets Tesla Gigafactory.
Saronic recently hit a $4 billion valuation, making it the second most valuable defense startup in America behind Anduril. These guys move fast. Saronic secured government contracts in under 90 days. That usually takes years!
Saronic’s approach reminds me of SpaceX. Before Musk launched skyscraper-sized rockets, he built Starhopper, a tiny capsule that proved reusability.
Saronic’s Spyglass is the Starhopper of the sea. It’s a 6 ft. stealthy reconnaissance drone. Next it built Corsair, a 24 ft. “gunboat” that can travel 1,000 nautical miles.
Saronic recently revealed its heftiest boat to date, Marauder. It’s a 150-foot, 40-ton AI-powered autonomous beast that can travel for more than a month with no one aboard.
Saronic is building a 100% autonomous robot navy – with water drones that can be updated in real time, like your iPhone. It will be able to move in coordinated swarms, with one person managing dozens of vessels.
Saronic’s masterplan is to bring American shipbuilding back to WWII levels, but for the autonomous age. Dino Mavrookas knows the only way to match China’s manufacturing might is with autonomous boats that can swarm, surveil, and strike without risking lives.
The Pentagon’s $500 million Replicator program was practically written for a startup like Saronic. Its goal is to field thousands of low-cost, autonomous drones to help America regain naval dominance.
Did you know:
More people have been to the moon than the deepest parts of our oceans?
Over 80% of the ocean remains unmapped.
For an investor, ocean-tech feels like discovering a new continent. A true frontier, a blue-world economy waiting to be built. With new opportunities ranging from autonomous shipping to port security to underwater data centers.
My friend Tyler Cowen likes to frame things as overrated vs. underrated. The ocean is severely underrated.
I love space. I’m incredibly bullish on the companies building the future in orbit like Varda, Apex and Astranis. But it’s strange that we’ve poured billions into the black void above while largely ignoring the teeming, resource-rich, strategically vital frontier right here on Earth.
Now the same spirit that put footprints on the moon is coming to the oceans.
Still, the narrative around American maritime power is one of decline. “We’re screwed.” But a new breed of builders – including Saronic, Poseidon, Ulysses – is putting America on track for a maritime renaissance.
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—Stephen McBride
Stephen McBride is a co-founder of the Rational Optimist Society.