Online Oceans' Solar Robot Boats are Collecting Valuable Marine Data

More than two-thirds of the Earth’s surface is covered by oceans. Despite the sheer size of these seven seas —- and the role they play in everything from supply chain to defense — we just don’t know that much about them, nor have a good way to collect data on them. Online Oceans is hoping to change that. 

United Kingdom-based Online Oceans builds autonomous solar-powered vessels named Scout that cruise the ocean for months at a time, collecting data on everything from wave height and weather to monitoring subsea vessels and marine life. Scout relays the data it collects via satellite to the company’s Tether command center software where users can access that information in real time. 

George Morton, the co-founder and CEO of Online Oceans, told A3 that the boats are designed to be applicable to a variety of use cases. Because of that, Scout’s design is relatively simple and customers can choose specific packages of sensors to install on top or integrate third-party tools based on what they need. 

“The way we describe it is like a pickup truck -- a Ford F-150 of the marine environment with a platfor. We provide power, we provide communications, and then you chuck stuff off the back,” Morton said. “We just want to be a platform that other people can plug into and use.”

Customers don’t have to buy a vessel to sign up for Online Oceans’ data subscription.

Morton’s journey to the maritime industry started at ExxonMobil. While there, he was introduced to The Wave Glider, Liquid Robotics’ surfboard-shaped vessel that was being trialed for oil spill response. He was shocked at the lofty price tag and wondered how hard building something like that could actually be. 

He got further interested in the space when he came across the Microtransat Challenge, a competition where participants attempt to build autonomous bots to cross the Atlantic Ocean, during the downtime of Covid-19 lockdowns. He wasn’t successful but the idea of working on a small autonomous vessel stuck with him. 

Mortonlaunched Online Oceans with CTO Alistair Douglas in March 2025. The company raised a £1 million ($1.34 million) angel  round from SolarCity founder Pete Rive and Koro Capital to launch into product development. The company raised an additional £4 million ($5.36 million) seed round earlier this year led by Seraphin Space before ramping up for production. 

Online Oceans isn’t the only company looking to build tech to make gathering ocean data easier. Oshen is another British startup that builds swarms of autonomous vessels that collect ocean and weather data. Quartermaster has a similar goal but different approach of building a smart boat mast loaded with sensors and cameras.

The demand for this type of tech is vast. Morton said the team initially imagined they would get heavy interest from the defense sector, but have seen inbound from many other categories. For example, the company recently shipped a boat to the University of Hawaii for coral reef monitoring. 

Now, Online Oceans is looking to actively hire and ramp up productions for both Scout and additional tech that’s on the horizon. 

“It’s definitely been surprising, and continues to surprise in terms of the rate of acceleration of demand to a point where [we’re] totally production constrained versus sales constrained,” Morton said. “We're having to turn away sales because of our production constraints.”