Everyone is talking about AI. Everyone is talking about space. Very few are talking about the largest frontier right next to us: The ocean.
AI does not automatically create prosperity, because intelligence is only one input into economic growth. As AI makes intelligence cheaper, other factors become relatively scarcer: Energy, compute, critical minerals, land, freshwater, and physical infrastructure. In simple terms, the bottleneck moves from software to atoms.
That raises an interesting question. Where will humanity build the next layer of civilisation?
Historically, every major leap in economic growth came from opening a new frontier. First fertile river valleys, then oceans through maritime trade, then continents through railways, then air travel, and more recently space through satellites. The next frontier may not be millions of kilometres away. It may be a few kilometres below us.
The ocean covers around 71% of Earth's surface, yet we operate economically on only a tiny fraction of it. Ironically, we have mapped parts of Mars and the Moon in greater detail than large areas of our own seafloor. But mapping is not the same as accessibility. Much of the ocean remains economically inaccessible because of communication, navigation, pressure, materials, energy storage, and autonomous robotics challenges.
Think about what happened in space. Space did not become economically interesting because there were minerals on the Moon. It became valuable when satellites transformed communication, navigation, weather forecasting, and Earth observation. Space became a new operating domain for civilisation. The ocean could follow a similar path.
{{/usCountry}}Think about what happened in space. Space did not become economically interesting because there were minerals on the Moon. It became valuable when satellites transformed communication, navigation, weather forecasting, and Earth observation. Space became a new operating domain for civilisation. The ocean could follow a similar path.
{{/usCountry}}Imagine if operating anywhere within a country's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) became as easy as operating on land. Suddenly entirely new industries become possible:
- Large offshore renewable energy parks with higher capacity factors than land-based installations
- Floating hydrogen and ammonia production powered directly by offshore wind
- AI data centres cooled naturally by seawater
- Autonomous underwater logistics
- Marine biotechnology discovering entirely new classes of medicines
- Persistent underwater sensor networks for climate monitoring and national security
- Large-scale desalination integrated with clean energy
The opportunity is not simply extracting more resources. It is creating a new industrial platform.
This becomes even more relevant in an AI-driven world. Suppose AI, electrification, desalination, and industrial decarbonisation double or even triple the world's electricity demand over the coming decades. Every additional gigawatt built on land competes with agriculture, forests, cities, and local communities. The ocean offers something increasingly scarce on land: Space.
A simple back-of-the-envelope calculation illustrates the scale. India's EEZ is about 2.4 million square kilometres. If just 0.1% of that area, roughly 2,400 square kilometres, were eventually used for offshore renewable energy and assuming a realistic average power density of around 5 watts per square metre for large offshore wind deployments, it could support roughly 12 GW of continuous power, or around 100 TWh of electricity annually. That is enough electricity to power tens of millions of Indian homes. If technology eventually made 1% of the EEZ economically usable for energy, the numbers would become an order of magnitude larger. The exact figures will change with technology, but the point is simple: the ocean offers room to expand at a scale that land increasingly cannot.
India is uniquely positioned to lead this transition. India has roughly 3.3 million square kilometres of land and an EEZ of approximately 2.4 million square kilometres, about 70% as large as its land area. If future continental shelf claims are fully realised, India's seabed jurisdiction grows even further.
India also has something less tangible but equally important: a maritime legacy stretching back several millennia. From the ports of the Indus Valley civilisation to the Indian Ocean trade routes, from the Chola naval expeditions across Southeast Asia to renowned shipbuilding traditions on both the western and eastern coasts, India has long been a maritime civilisation. Long before modern globalisation, Indian ships connected continents. Ocean engineering is not an entirely new ambition for India. It is a continuation of a historical strength.
Modern India has continued that legacy. ISRO demonstrated that India can build globally competitive frontier technology under resource constraints. Through the Deep Ocean Mission, the National Institute of Ocean Technology and decades of marine science, India has already built important capabilities in ocean research. Combined with its long coastline, island territories and growing deep-tech ecosystem, India possesses many of the ingredients needed to lead the next phase.
But the biggest opportunity is not another government mission. It is building an entire private technology ecosystem around ocean infrastructure.
The ocean remains unexplored not because no one has thought about it, but because it is genuinely difficult to access. We need several technological breakthroughs before the economics start to make sense. To build a frontier, though, you have to set the aspiration first and work backward. The starting question is simple: What happens if we could access 90% of a country's EEZ at a cost 100 times cheaper than today, and what would that unlock?
That brings us to the real question: What are today's bottlenecks, and what enabling technology is needed to reach that milestone? There are several obvious ones. We do not have good navigation, communication, propulsion, or even materials that can withstand pressure at depth. The OceanGate accident, in which the entire crew was lost, is a stark reminder of the risks of getting this wrong. We cannot afford to repeat it, which means building the right enabling technology to de-risk these operations from the outset.
The enabling technologies here are remarkably similar to those required for space:
- Autonomous robotics
- Advanced materials
- Long-duration energy systems
- Precision navigation without GPS
- Reliable underwater communications
- AI operating in disconnected environments
- Digital twins
- Sensor networks
These are deep-tech problems capable of producing globally competitive companies.
This is not just about India, either. More than 150 countries have coastlines. Many possess exclusive economic zones far larger than their land area, yet lack the technology to use them responsibly. If India becomes a global leader in ocean technologies, it would not simply unlock its own maritime potential. It could provide the technologies, platforms, and expertise that enable dozens of other nations to safely expand their economic capacity. Just as India's digital public infrastructure now inspires countries around the world, India could help build the technological foundation for a global ocean economy.
The opportunity is particularly compelling because no country has established decisive leadership in this domain. Unlike semiconductors, commercial aviation, or large language models, where incumbents already enjoy enormous advantages, the ocean technology ecosystem remains fragmented. The race is still open. That makes the next decade unusually important. Countries that invest now could define standards, build industrial champions, and establish leadership before the market matures.
That said, we should resist treating the ocean as another resource extraction story. The ocean is Earth's climate engine. It regulates weather, absorbs enormous amounts of heat and carbon dioxide, and supports ecosystems we still barely understand. Developing it irresponsibly could create environmental costs far larger than the ones we are trying to solve. The objective should therefore not be maximum extraction but maximum capability with minimum ecological footprint. The first generation of ocean technologies should focus on making the ocean observable, connected, autonomous, and measurable. Better sensing, better monitoring, and better governance should come before large-scale industrialisation.
Perhaps the biggest lesson from AI is that enabling technologies create entirely new industries that nobody predicts at the start. Nobody built the internet because they wanted social media. Nobody launched satellites because they wanted ride-sharing apps. Likewise, we should not ask what resources the ocean contains today. We should ask what industries become possible once the ocean becomes economically accessible.
India has often succeeded when it invested early in strategic technologies before they became obvious, from space missions to digital public infrastructure. The ocean deserves the same long-term thinking. As AI makes intelligence abundant, the countries that learn to expand humanity's physical operating space responsibly may define the next century of economic leadership. India has both the opportunity and the historical foundation to be one of them.
(The views expressed are personal)
This article is authored by Ankit Anand, founding partner, Riceberg Ventures.