Yeah my understanding is that it was not profitable either. The founder claimed he was losing money and to his credit, he ate the cost on the previous failed missions (of which there are a shockingly high number of).
There was one article I read last year (don't have it here) where he claimed his hard costs were $1M per voyage to cover fuel and consumables. So the $250k buy-in was literally a break-even on his expenses (he carries 4 passengers paying the fee, plus himself in the sub). None of that covers any R&D and he had some very respectable people working for him, including engineers from Boeing, NASA, and Northdrop Grumman. So we can assume those were hefty salaries for his R&D team.
I'm sure they were scrappy too, hence the "cobbled" together nature of things. But it does seem like this was a true startup in ever sense of the word.
Unfortunately it might be leaning closer to the Theranos type of startup where he might have oversold his capabilities to keep the ball rolling and investors happy.
There was one article I read last year (don't have it here) where he claimed his hard costs were $1M per voyage to cover fuel and consumables. So the $250k buy-in was literally a break-even on his expenses (he carries 4 passengers paying the fee, plus himself in the sub). None of that covers any R&D and he had some very respectable people working for him, including engineers from Boeing, NASA, and Northdrop Grumman. So we can assume those were hefty salaries for his R&D team.
I'm sure they were scrappy too, hence the "cobbled" together nature of things. But it does seem like this was a true startup in ever sense of the word.
Unfortunately it might be leaning closer to the Theranos type of startup where he might have oversold his capabilities to keep the ball rolling and investors happy.