Booz Allen bets on maritime autonomy

Booz Allen Hamilton’s corporate venture capital arm, Booz Allen Ventures, has invested in Ulysses, a San Francisco-based maritime robotics company developing cost-efficient, high-volume autonomous surface and underwater vehicles for maritime operations.

Amid rising demand for low-cost, scalable unmanned undersea systems, the investment is intended to broaden integrated maritime solutions across mine countermeasures, multi-vehicle swarming and survey missions, and operations in high-risk environments. “Maritime forces need affordable and scalable systems undersea. That demand will require us to build and field autonomous undersea platforms that can be integrated with the Navy’s future hybrid fleet,” said Jennie Brooks, executive vice president at Booz Allen and a leader of the company’s Navy-Marine Corps portfolio. “Together, Ulysses and Booz Allen can provide advanced technology solutions for the undersea domain at speed, scale, and cost.”

Ulysses develops surface and underwater vehicles optimized for cost-efficient, high-volume deployment in complex maritime environments, combining cost-efficient hardware with advanced onboard computers to enable next-generation autonomy and new concepts of operations. “The ocean is the last great frontier,” said Akhil Voorakkara, co-founder and CEO of Ulysses. “Every other domain—land, air, space—has seen a revolution in access and capability in the past two decades. The ocean hasn’t. Operating at sea still means crewed vessels at tens of thousands of dollars a day, and most of the ocean goes completely unmonitored as a result. We’re building autonomous systems that change that equation by orders of magnitude—vehicles that can survey, inspect, and protect our oceans at a scale that’s never been possible.”

Designed for infrastructure inspection, environmental monitoring, and search and recovery, Ulysses platforms are applicable across diverse operational environments. By integrating these capabilities, Booz Allen is expanding its ability to deliver cost-saving solutions where significant mission need exists.

“This investment reflects our commitment and conviction that maritime autonomous systems will be a defining domain for years to come in building and ensuring maritime dominance,” said Brian MacCarthy, managing partner of Booz Allen Ventures. “By backing dual-use, venture-backed startups like Ulysses, we are expanding our portfolio into robotics and autonomy and building capabilities that enable deployment at speed across sea, air, and land.”

The investment is part of Ulysses’ Series A funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz’s American Dynamism fund. It marks Booz Allen’s first investment in the maritime sector and its first investment in parallel with Andreessen Horowitz since announcing a partnership in January 2026 to build and accelerate the adoption of advanced technology. “Our partnership with Booz Allen was built on a shared conviction that the best commercial technology should reach the missions that need it most,” said Jen Kha, head of global partnerships at Andreessen Horowitz. “Ulysses is exactly the kind of company we had in mind, a bold team building critical capabilities at the intersection of autonomy and maritime defense. Seeing this investment happen in parallel with Booz Allen is a proof point that our collaboration is already delivering.”

Launched in 2022, Booz Allen Ventures makes strategic investments in early-stage startups focused on AI, defense tech, deep tech, cybersecurity, space, and reindustrialization. The fund tripled to $300 million last year.