Cheeky Pint: Inside the $50K underwater drone race with Will O'Brien

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

When people think robotics, they usually picture factories or self-driving cars. But John Collison's recent conversation with Will O'Brien took things in a completely different direction—underwater. And that's where things get really interesting. O'Brien is co-founder and president of Ulyses, and he says they "build robots to solve some of the most critical tasks in our oceans." The challenge? Saltwater is an incredibly hostile environment. Right. So Ulyses started with seagrass restoration, then expanded into seabed mapping, port security, and other ocean work.

O'Brien mentions this striking fact: seagrass covers only 2% of the seafloor but holds 20% of the ocean's sequestered carbon, plus it supports a huge share of commercially important fish stocks. That's a massive environmental lever. But their goal isn't just restoration—it's making ocean operations cheap enough to support entirely new industries.

Let's talk about the hardware behind that vision. They've got two main systems. Leviathan is the autonomous surface vehicle with a 2,000-nautical-mile range. Then there's Makeo, the underwater drone built with modular, Lego-like components that can be swapped for different missions—planting seagrass, mapping, security work for the Navy, you name it. O'Brien calls this an "eco-pragmatist" view—human prosperity and a healthy biosphere have to grow together.

But what about manufacturing? That's usually where ambitious hardware companies struggle.

He's upfront about it. Ulyses began with mostly off-the-shelf parts, but they're moving more in-house now. The software is already built largely from scratch, and they're developing internal sonar and inertial navigation systems. O'Brien says "we need to reach the scale of millions of units"—there are millions of aerial drones each year, but only a tiny number of underwater ones. And that scaling problem is also their business opportunity. O'Brien says they have more demand than supply and they're opening a large factory next year.

Ocean work is still dominated by expensive ships, crews, and tethered systems, while autonomous robots could cut labor costs and operate in rougher conditions. So what's the hardest technical problem? Not corrosion or pressure. O'Brien says "the biggest challenge is underwater communication" because acoustic bandwidth is tiny. That's why the surface vehicle matters so much—it enables charging, internet connection, and live diagnostics. On the commercial side, they're already working with the U.S. Navy on mine countermeasures and with wind developers on cable monitoring. O'Brien says "in the Navy space, we can sell units for as little as $50,000," compared with roughly $5 million for current systems. Collison and O'Brien also discussed innovation more broadly, using Guinness as an example—a company that built in-house research, produced the student's t-test, and paired technical invention with iconic marketing.

The broader message is clear. Whether in beer, space, or the sea, the big gains come from deep engineering, patient capital, and a willingness to build the hard thing first.