Nauticus Robotics, a Houston-based marine robotics company, is now a public company. Back in December 2021, it agreed a deal with CleanTech Acquisition Corp, a SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Corporation). The deal valued Nauticus at $377 million enterprise value.
The company used to be called Houston Mechatronics. It was founded in 2014 by Nicholaus Radford, who previously worked at NASA and Oceaneering. The company has its head office in Webster, two miles from the NASA Johnson Space Center and employs about 25 former NASA robot engineers.
Currently, manned service vessels are used to service the offshore energy sectors. Nauticus is developing tetherless, autonomous electric-powered robots that can be controlled by staff onshore. The company plans to rent out its Aquanaut robot for around $40,000 a day, less than half the cost of a deepwater rig.
Pre-production units are projected to be deployed in later this year. The company recently sold its first unit to IKM Subsea in Norway.
Investors in the business included Schlumberger (who now own 20%) and Transocean (19%).
Mr. Radford is the CEO. Rangan Padmanabhan was appointed CFO in May 2022. He spent many years at Solaris Asset Management and is a graduate of Rice University.
The company will trade on the NASDAQ under the ticker ‘KITT’.