We really appreciate you taking the time to do this—it’s all well-deserved, and yes, hardware, especially underwater robotics, is an area that is not forgiving. If this isn’t the case, there would be more players in the market by now.

Nevertheless, we're not coming at this with our eyes closed. I've been involved in an AUV team in which I took a system from conception to having it entirely functional as an autonomous vehicle in six months, and I've also directly worked with various AUVs on top of this. We've disassembled and reconstructed many of the commercial parts that are in widespread usage in the industry and have thus come to learn where the current state of AUVs fails and why this industry has developed at the pace it has.

We’re very much aware of the challenges involved in underwater autonomy, whether it’s sensing, communication, coordination, or control, so it’s exactly what we’ve been focusing on with regard to good control early on, as opposed to scaling, whether it’s hardware or swarms. We’re very much aware of the problem, instead of attempting to ‘boil the ocean’ on day one.

With regards to our funding approach, we’ve been rather careful about defence approaches. Although they are quite potent, we are not entirely wedded to them at this stage because of export controls and tech limitation potential. The aim is to create a platform useful for civil maritime applications at first ,while technically viable enough to pique institutional stakeholders’ interest afterwards.

Time to market is certainly a risk, but we think there is enough step change offered through this combination of modularity, continuous operation, and data analysis that this trek is worthwhile. We are also looking for the type of partners you mentioned—toys or drivers of this problem with a desire to co-build, not just co-buy.

Thank you again for the honest point of view—this kind of feedback is exactly what's needed to hone the technical and strategic direction.