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Cheeky Pint · 2 min · Oct 15, 2026

Ulysses is building robots to inspect wind cables and cut fishing line

WO

Will O’Brien

Founder & CEO, Ulysses

  • John CollisonHost · Co-founder & president, Stripe

    Sold his first startup, Auctomatic, at 17, then co-founded Stripe in 2010.

About this segment

Ulysses has U.S. Navy mine-countermeasures work and an offshore-wind project to monitor floating power cables. The team is developing a tool to detect and cut fishing line that can harm marine life.

From “The company building underwater drones for $50,000”, Oct 15, 2026. Watch the full episode

“we're building an implement that will cut the fishing lines off of the floating offshore wind lines.”
WOWill O’Brienat 32:31 · Cheeky Pint32:31

Takeaways

  1. Ulysses has worked on mine countermeasures for the U.S. Navy.
  2. Floating-wind cables can collect abandoned fishing line.
  3. Robotic surveys would check cable integrity and identify lines to cut.
Watch 2:12 from 31:02

In this episode

Full episode
  1. 21:34Scaling underwater drones requires rethinking the supply chain4:51
  2. 38:12Underwater drones can cost far less than Navy vehicles4:45
  3. 45:52Undersea cables need persistent monitoring3:45
  4. 27:43Underwater robots must compute locally because communications are slow3:27

  5. 31:02Ulysses is building robots to inspect wind cables and cut fishing line2:12

  6. 11:37Seagrass restoration starts with mapping suitable habitat2:57Up next
  7. 16:43Cheaper ocean access could enable persistent operations2:22

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

  1. 31:08

    what applications are you having most success with with the robot right now like what are you selling the robot for right now i mean there's kind of two domains in which we've had like a lot of success in the last year um the so nature was kind of what we did and focused on kind of first year last year you know this being the second year of the business we kind of like started to look at other uh use cases so uh last year we got our first contract with the u.s navy and we got our first contract with an offshore wind um developer as well so u.s navy was um actually you know we were doing mine countermeasures finding mines and hunting mines before it was cool uh you know before before the straights of her muse popped off so we were we were working on some work related to that and then um the uh i haven't heard straights of her muse popped off

  2. 31:53

    that's pretty sweet way to appeal to his younger listeners uh and then the uh offshore wind contract was you know where actually there's this problem in california where they're trying to build floating offshore wind where um they need to one of the objections of the floating offshore wind is that you put these power cables in the water they attract abandoned fishing lines the fishing lines then are what catch uh dolphins and whales and these sorts of things and um that thing one of the biggest obstructions to offshore wind in in california and uh so it's like could you build we built we're building this sensing system like a surface underwater vehicle that will map these cables on a daily basis, look at their structural integrity, and see if they're in good condition, and also if they're getting lines cut on them.

  3. 32:34

    And if there is a line cut on them, we're building an implement that will cut the fishing lines off of the floating offshore wind lines. I'm sorry, why are the offshore wind turbines getting caught up in lines a problem? Basically, when you build a floating offshore wind terminal and then you have the cable running up, I see. That cable's in the water. I see. And it's the power cable that's feeding the power back to it.

  4. 32:55

    Yeah, and then you might just have like a fishing there floating through the water that that is like has fallen off some Japanese As you know fishing line like every section can't breathe and it'll get caught in that Can you we can you bring that over excellent? Actually good. We'll give you guys so it's so weird