Ocean tech: too early or mis-funded?

James Lindsay's composite ocean fund manager is a middle-aged investment banker who grew up sailing. On a first holiday in 15 years, with a 12-year-old in tow, the banker sees how much bleaching there is where they once sailed and decides to launch a fund. Builders Vision, the family office where James works, backed many such first-time managers after starting a dedicated ocean programme in late 2019. They had strong impact goals and strong financial skills, James said, and little of what lies between. Several years and about 65 ocean investments later, that gap was the main answer to the question James and Jerome Ternynck of Rypples put to the table. Ocean tech is less too early than mis-funded.

Capital friction

Early-stage money now exists. The trouble starts at the next cliff, James said, when a company needs someone to lead its Series A. Generalist and even climate investors do not understand an ocean company's customers, or why a start-up working offshore has 80 commissions that care about it. Builders Vision now spends about half its time helping to lead Series B and C rounds, because few investors know how to price them.

Optimistic early investors, James said, told founders the market was readier than it was. The companies then raise a bridge every nine to twelve months, and the CEO is too busy fundraising to hire the right team. Emerging managers make it worse. A manager targets $75 million, closes halfway and has no reserves when a company breaks out. The result, James said, is "a lot of failures that were just a capital friction failure, not a product failure, not a founder execution failure". James's advice to founders was to ask what a fund can do for them over five years, and to take less money if necessary. Jerome offered founders a rule of thumb. Multiply your valuation by 20 and you have the expectations you signed up for.

Somebody owns the P&L

Shipping is where ocean tech is furthest along, and the reason is a customer who pays. A growth-equity investor said maritime decarbonisation was the only ocean segment their fund had backed, and only the near-term part, with batteries on short-haul tugs and ferries. They had not yet seen a long-haul solution. Adoption comes from regulation or from lower total cost of ownership. "Make it cheaper, don't make it greener, and then people will adopt it," the investor said.

Nobody gets into shipping for altruistic reasons, James said. A shipowner will argue hard over what a hull-cleaning robot really saves, but with a clear case will always buy the best option. Many ocean solutions struggle because they benefit the ocean at large and have no clear customer. Jerome gave an example of what that looks like. A marine protected area in French Polynesia is the size of Europe, and it has two boats to patrol it.

The efficiency plays that work whatever the fuel appealed to both hosts. Jerome listed hull cleaning, air lubrication, wind propulsion and electric boats on foils, which are about 80% more efficient. James described a pilot in which a Singapore cargo company combined sails with weather and current routing from Sofar Ocean and cut fuel by about 30% on a Pacific voyage. Large cargo carriers are already building dual-fuel ships as standard, James said. Three years ago owners argued that ammonia on board would kill them all, and now they are waiting for someone to build the bunkering.

a lot of failures that were just a capital friction failure, not a product failure, not a founder execution failure

Strategic buyers

Asked who buys ocean companies, James said every exit Builders Vision has seen went to a strategic buyer. The write-offs were science-led companies that never broadened their offer. A coral restoration company can win a good contract here and there but struggles to build a venture model. Add mangroves and other restoration and it becomes attractive. Telecoms and big industrial groups will not come, James said, until ocean companies look like platforms. Jerome cited WSense, an Italian company that built underwater wireless networking. It was bought by the shipbuilder Fincantieri, when arguably Cisco should have bought it.

Seaweed's first harvest

Jerome was bullish on seaweed. If biomaterials are to replace oil-based products, the biomass must come from somewhere, and the ocean could serve as farmland. A participant said seaweed cultivation was the clearest case of both too early and mis-funded. Europe's start-ups need alginate, yet the continent's few seaweed farming companies are going bankrupt for lack of money.

James did not dispute the need. Builders Vision has had to shut down many seaweed companies and has pulled back hard. Farming costs are too high, lenders avoid a live crop, and in the North Atlantic the four-week planting window falls when the weather is worst. The farms that work are mostly oyster or mussel farms that added seaweed on the side, with equipment and permits already in hand. Korea scaled because its seaweed feeds abalone. James now looks at processing and high-value extracts such as biostimulants. A founder running a seaweed biorefinery added that farms spun out of research are rarely run as real farms.

The science is young, James said. Some seaweeds are richest in a target compound at their third harvest. Wild carrots are toxic, and it took 10,000 years of breeding to make them food, while seaweed farming has barely begun that work. The founder of one of Builders Vision's last seaweed farming companies keeps an office full of nothing but books on precision agriculture on land.

This Ripple was hosted by Jerome Ternynck (Rypples) and James Lindsay (Builders Vision) at The Drop 2026 on 16 September.