Autonomous marine drone startup, Ulysses Ecosystem Engineering, has raised $2m in pre-seed funding.
The oversubscribed round was led by Lowercarbon Capital.
But Superorganism, the world's first biodiversity VC, and ReGen Ventures, an investor in planetary-scale regenerative technologies, also participated.
Angel investors, including Intercom co-founders Eoghan McCabe and Ciaran Lee, also took part.
The now San Francisco based firm was founded in 2023 by Irish engineers Will O'Brien and Colm O'Brien along with Akhil Voorakkara, Jamie Wedderburn.
It aims to restore seagrass ecosystems that foster biodiversity and draw down carbon from the atmosphere.
It plans to do this by using specially-designed autonomous robots, which enable kilometre-scale seagrass restoration that is cheaper, easier, faster, and more effective it claims.
7% of seagrass meadows are lost every year and restoration is expensive.
"Every year, we lose seagrass meadows the size of a small country, taking with them critical marine habitat and powerful carbon sinks," said Akhil Voorakkara, CEO and co-founder of Ulysses.
"We've proven that autonomous restoration can reverse this trend at a fraction of the traditional cost."
The drones collect seeds from healthy donor meadows, replant them in areas where seagrass has been lost, and then monitor their growth.
The company has already partnered with The Nature Conservancy and governments in Florida and Australia to conduct large-scale ecosystem restoration projects.
Later this year, it will start work on a project in Western Australia that is poised to become one of the largest seagrass restoration projects in the world.
"Seagrass is the little-known hero of the ocean, capturing 35 times more carbon per acre than rainforests and providing critical habitat for coastal species," said Ryan Orbuch, partner at Lowercarbon Capital.
"Until now, hand planting was the only way to restore it. Ulysses' underwater drones make it 10x cheaper and are ready to scale restoration efforts today."
