Most of what we know about the ocean, we literally just scratch the surface. We collect a large amount of data about the ocean from satellites, most of which is based on the surface layer of water. Below that, the picture becomes even darker.
Recently, buoys, ships, and some autonomous rovers have added detailed information that is completely different from what we get from satellites today. This is frustrating for everyone from fishermen to coast guards, meteorologists to offshore wind developers.
“It’s always been very difficult to get data from the underground ocean,” Ravi Pappu, founder and CEO of Apeiron Labs, told TechCrunch. “It’s really slow. You need a boat that costs $100,000 a day. [and] Steam will slowly come out. It’s all about expeditions. ”
Pape hopes his swinging autonomous underwater vessel can change that. He founded Apeiron Labs in 2022 after serving as CTO of In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the CIA. There, the lack of ocean data continued to emerge as a “persistent problem.”
To fill this gap, Apeiron Labs is building a low-cost vehicle that travels 400 meters up and down the water column (the vertical portion of the ocean from the surface to the ocean floor), sampling temperature, salinity, and acoustics once or twice a day. Apeiron currently sells to both civilian and defense customers, Pape said.
Apeiron Labs recently closed a $9.5 million Series A round led by Dyne Ventures, RA Capital Management Planetary Health, and S2G Investments to build and sell more autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), the company exclusively tells TechCrunch. Assembly Ventures, Bay Bridge Ventures, and TFX Capital participated.
The startup’s AUV, which is 3 feet long, 5 inches in diameter, and weighs just over 20 pounds, can be deployed from a boat or plane. Not coincidentally, they also fit into the US Navy’s existing launchers. Once the AUV touches down, it obtains orientation, connects to a cloud-based operating system, and records data.
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During a dive, the operating system uses a model of the ocean to predict where you will surface. When the AUV finally breaks in and reconnects to the operating system, cloud-based software incorporates new data and refines the model. AUVs are spaced approximately 10 km to 20 km (6.2 miles to 12.4 miles) apart to form lines or arrays that capture data at higher resolution than ship-based efforts.
Apeiron envisions deploying dozens or even hundreds of AUVs for a variety of customers. The Department of Defense may use these to detect submarines off the coast of the United States, while fishermen may want to obtain more detailed temperature and salinity data on key fishing grounds. The goal is to continuously monitor key parts of the ocean.
Papp said that at Apeiron’s current scale, the cost of ocean data has been reduced by a factor of 100. He wants to cut that by a factor of 1,000, and Apeiron thinks he can reach that goal next year. “We think of ourselves as a CubeSat for the ocean,” Papp added, referring to a type of small, low-cost satellite.
Updated at 10 a.m. ET: The headline has been updated to reflect that Apeiron has raised $9.5 million instead of $29 million.
