Another $20 million raised by Terradepth to map the ocean floor with robots

• ByStartupStory     |    April 12, 2022

Roughly 20% of the ocean floor has been mapped, at last count. Around double the surface area of Mars, will be added up to the remaining portion. In order to improve what we know about a largely unexplored portion of our planet, a number of firms out there are working and initiatives like the XPrize have been pushing young upstarts to take part in recent years. From studying biodiversity to laying underground cable, there are myriad reasons for doing so. 

Though the firm has already drummed up a good deal of funding in its short life, Austin-based Terradepth is itself a relatively new entrant. Back in 2019, it announced an $8 million round, and another $20 million is just added to its hopper. Giant Ventures and Nimble Ventures, led the latest round, which is aimed at fueling a model the company punchily describes as “Google Earth for Oceans.”

Terradepth is looking to improve its data visualization platform, Absolute Ocean, specifically this time out, as well as recharging capabilities for the AUVs (submersible drones) it uses in order to collect all of that data. The company is looking forward to monetizing the information it collects as shareable cloud-based content, through Absolute Ocean. Data is the real eventual moneymaker for a company, as is the case with most of these monitoring robots..

All sorts of actionable insights for a variety of industries is provided by offering insight into depths of up 6,000 meters. Terradepth says that the current method for collecting data is more scalable than due largely to its costing a fraction of the price, the alternatives. On-board edge-processing and the aforementioned recharging capabilities are at the heart of the AUV system.

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