Building the Future of Food Production
Growing up in Goa, India, the ocean was always part of my life. That connection to the sea never left me, even after moving to the US at eight years old. When I learned about the state of global fisheries and the massive opportunity in aquaculture, everything clicked. This is where I needed to be.
Why Aquaculture Matters
The numbers are staggering. The ocean covers 70% of Earth’s surface but produces just 2% of our food. Wild fisheries hit their ceiling in the 1990s—37.7% are now overfished, another 57% at maximum sustainable yield. With global population heading toward 10 billion by 2050 and food production needing to increase 70%, 100% of seafood growth must come from aquaculture.
Fish are 4-6x more feed-efficient than cattle. Researchers at UC Santa Barbara found that if aquaculture replaced livestock for protein growth, we could spare land twice the size of India. The math is existential—and the technology to optimize it is finally here.
The Problem We’re Solving
Two of the most critical QA steps in fish production are still done by hand: phenotyping (measuring fish traits for breeding) and deformity inspection (filtering unhealthy juveniles). These processes are slow—5+ minutes per fish manually—error-prone, stressful for fish, and despised by technicians. Yet they’re vital. Farms spend over $200K annually on trained technicians and geneticists, and 70% of a farm’s costs go to feed, most of which is wasted on fish that won’t reach harvest.
We describe our solution as “TSA for your luggage, but for fish.”
What We Built
OctaPulse’s precision inspection system combines AI, computer vision, and specialized hardware to cut inspection time from 5 minutes to under 30 seconds per fish with 90%+ accuracy. We filter unhealthy fish before the main feeding stage—where 70% of costs occur—allowing farms to advance only high-quality fish, waste less feed and labor, and potentially double profitability.
Our technology stack includes high-resolution imaging for broodstock phenotyping and juvenile deformity inspection, machine learning models trained to measure length, weight, morphology, fin placement, coloration, and health indicators, IoT edge computing for real-time processing in production environments, and Azure infrastructure for scalable deployment across facilities.
The Genetics Opportunity
Here’s something that blew my mind: chickens today grow 4x faster than they did in 1950, thanks to decades of selective breeding. But only a tiny fraction of the 580+ farmed aquatic species have been through formal genetic improvement programs. Why? You can’t improve what you can’t measure—and fish are underwater.
Computer vision unlocks genetics at scale: 100% population measurement, objective trait quantification, multi-generational tracking, and the data density that makes AI-driven selection possible. The farms that crack this will have compounding advantages for decades.
The Team
I co-founded OctaPulse with Paul Grech. We came together in Pittsburgh—a landlocked city—united by our passion for ocean efforts. Paul brings product and UX expertise from Bloomberg and leadership experience at CMU’s 99 Tartans and Project Olympus.
We’re backed by incredible advisors: Matthew Johnson-Roberson (Director of the CMU Robotics Institute), Dylan Howell (Program Manager at Hatch Blue Accelerator), and Dr. Armando Ortega (Professor of Aquaculture at University of Hawaii Hilo).
Y Combinator W26
Getting into Y Combinator was a massive milestone. It validated what we’d been building and connected us with a network of founders who understand what it takes to build transformative companies. The transition from hunting to farming took thousands of years on land. In the ocean, it’s happening in a single generation. We’re building the technology to accelerate it.
The Blue Revolution
This is bigger than one company. Aquaculture is a $313B+ market growing 5-6% annually—the fastest-growing food sector on Earth. The industry that will produce the majority of humanity’s seafood can’t easily count, weigh, or evaluate its animals at scale. Most fish farms today operate with less visibility into their stock than a 1990s retail store had into inventory.
We’re changing that. The future of protein is underwater. The future of fish farming is data-driven.