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From ocean drones to one engine: the Prism Labs journey
Prism Labs did not start as a workspace for people and AI agents. It started as a plan to find plastic in the ocean with drones. Every step since left something behind that the product runs on today. Here is the path, in order, and what each step became.
It began at sea
In March 2025 we joined the NDSU Possibility Fellowship as OceanSentinel: AI and drones that find plastic in the ocean and collect it on their own. The ocean was an odd place for a North Dakota team to start, but the idea underneath it lasted: machines that go out, look, and report what they find. That idea is now Prism X.
A patent, algae and fertilizer
In May 2025 EcoGrow reached the finals of the gener8tor North Dakota accelerator. EcoGrow used our provisionally patented NDSU technology to clean algae from rivers and lakes and turn what it captured into sustainable fertilizer. The science behind it is in the founder's op-ed From Waste to Wealth at Human Progress. Filing that patent also showed how hard it is to find what already exists, which is where our patent work began.
North Dakota has no ocean
In June 2025, at ILT Academy, OceanSentinel became WeSentinels. North Dakota needed answers at home, so one idea became a family of Sentinels:
- Blue for water
- Green for farms and forests
- Brown for soil
- Black for oil spills and runoff
- Teal for coral reefs
- Air, wildfire and hazardous waste next
The same core, pointed at a new problem each time, is how Prism now approaches every industry.
Talk to people first
In the fall of 2025 WeSentinels went through NSF I-Corps at the Great Plains regional level and came out with its final name, CleanSentinels. From the fall to December 2025 EcoGrow went through gBETA Fargo. Both rest on the same habit: talk to the people with the problem before building anything, and a lot of customer discovery came out of them. Every Prism product still starts that way, as a pilot with a real customer.
AgriVision
In December 2025 AgriVision, the technology behind Green Sentinel, won an NSF GROW award. AgriVision is now integrated into Prism X, where it sits behind the crop analysis in Prism Rover and Prism Sim.
Physics and geometry
In January 2026 we pointed the same engine at a very different problem: rocket nozzles, shaped from physics and geometry and then 3D printed, under the name Forge Propulsions. That work on physics and geometry carried into Prism Sim, the simulation and physics we build in house.
Recognition, and a turn
In spring 2026 CleanSentinels was named a finalist in Innovate ND. In April 2026 the NDSU Research Foundation nominated the founder for the Harvard Business School Foundry bootcamp. The bootcamp pushed us to strip away the environmental layer and keep what was underneath: a raw engine that could serve any field. That turn is Prism Labs: one workspace, any AI, your data.
In May 2026, with CleanSentinels still in transition, it reached the finals of the gener8tor North Dakota accelerator. The same month the founder's op-ed on giving the planet eyes to see, From Blind Spots to Bright Spots, ran at Human Progress.
Proving the engine, one field at a time
To test the engine in any field, we started where we knew the ground: environmental audits. They worked, but people called the result a chatbot wrapper. So we gave the engine a job no wrapper can do: the US patent record, 9.8 million patents and 109 million claims, to see whether it could hold millions of records. That work became Patent Intelligence, which is being rebuilt on a new patent database.
Next came a programme. A live pilot for an I-Corps programme now tracks 51 real startup teams. How that pipeline works is private.
Joining the wider ecosystem
In July 2026 Prism Labs joined NVIDIA Inception, NVIDIA's programme for startups. Prism Sim is built with NVIDIA GPUs. On 22 July 2026 we shared the story at Startup Brew with the region's startup community.
What it all became
| Step | What it became |
|---|---|
| OceanSentinel | Prism X: machines that work on their own and report what they find |
| EcoGrow and the patent | Patent Intelligence, and our work on water and natural resources |
| The Sentinel family | One engine for many industries |
| I-Corps and gBETA | Every product starts as a pilot with a real customer |
| AgriVision | Crop analysis inside Prism X |
| Forge Propulsions | Prism Sim |
| The Foundry | Prism Labs: one workspace, any AI, your data |
| Patents and the programme pilot | An engine that holds millions of records and runs live |
The next field is the one you bring. The whole path is also on our company page, and early access is through the waitlist.
Sources
- Aditya Goyal, From Waste to Wealth: the Alchemy of Innovation, Human Progress, 6 November 2025.
- Aditya Goyal, From Blind Spots to Bright Spots: How AI Is Giving the Planet Eyes to See, Human Progress, 20 May 2026.