Apeiron Labs gets $9.5 million to flood the oceans with autonomous underwater robots

Most of what we know about the ocean is only floating on the surface, literally. We have collected a large amount of ocean data from satellites, but most of it is based on the upper layer of water. Below that, the picture becomes darker.

There are buoys, ships, and some self-driving rovers Recently added Some details, but nothing like what we get from satellites today. It’s frustrating for everyone, from fishermen to the Coast Guard, meteorologists to offshore wind developers.

“Getting data from the subsurface ocean has always been difficult,” said Ravi Babu, founder and CEO Aperon LaboratoriesTechCrunch said. “It’s really slow. You need a ship that costs $100,000 a day, (and) it sails slowly. Everything is an expedition.”

Babu hopes his autonomous underwater vehicle can change that. He founded Apeiron Labs in 2022 after a stint as CTO at In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the CIA. There, the lack of ocean data was a “persistent problem” that kept cropping up.

To fill the gaps, Apeiron Labs is building low-cost vehicles that travel 400 meters up and down the water column (the vertical section of the ocean from the surface to the sea floor), sampling temperature, salinity, and acoustics once or twice a day. Apeiron currently sells to civilian and defense customers, Babu said.

To build and sell more of its autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), Apeiron Labs recently closed a $9.5 million Series A round led by Dyne Ventures, RA Capital Management Planetary Health, and S2G Investments, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. Assembly Ventures, Bay Bridge Ventures, and TFX Capital participated.

At three feet long, five inches in diameter, and just over 20 pounds, the startup’s AUVs can be deployed from boats or planes. It is no coincidence that it also fits into the US Navy’s existing launch equipment. Once the AUV reaches the water, it takes direction and connects to a cloud-based operating system, where it records its data.

While diving, the operating system uses models of the ocean to predict where it will appear. When the AUV finally hacks into the operating system and reconnects to it, the cloud-based software incorporates the new data to improve its models. The AUVs are spaced about 10 to 20 kilometers (6.2 miles to 12.4 miles) apart, forming a line or array that captures data more accurately than shipboard efforts.

Apeiron envisions deploying dozens or hundreds of its AUVs to a range of customers. The Pentagon may use it to eavesdrop on submarines off the coast of the United States, while fisheries may want more detailed data on temperature and salinity around key fishing waters. The goal is continuous monitoring in key parts of the ocean.

At Apeiron’s current scale, it has reduced the cost of ocean data by 100-fold, Baabo said. He wants to lower it by a factor of 1,000, and believes Apeiron can achieve that goal next year. “We see ourselves as a CubeSat for the oceans,” Babu adds, referring to a type of small, low-cost satellite.

Update at 10 a.m. ET: The headline has been updated to reflect that Apeiron has raised $9.5 million, not $29 million.