Honolulu, HI, August 25, 2025 – Technology and engineering firm Oceanit turned 40 this year as the company touts itself as a global innovator working from Hawaii.
The company had modest beginnings as a small coastal engineering firm. Founder and CEO Patrick Sullivan, an engineer and scientist, followed his wife Jan Sullivan — who hailed from Hawaii — to the islands to pursue her law career.
As he tells it, the company began 1985 with a hundred dollars of his money. His first paying contract was designing a proposed dock in the Ala Wai Canal. Sullivan recalled “there was a group looking at a Venice-like business for Waikiki that would have boats on the canal.”
The group went to University of Hawaii’s business school to build its business plan. But it soon realized it needed a design for the dock to see how it would actually work, as well as an estimate of the costs it would require.
“It was never built, but we had a very cool design that was a floating dock on the Ala Wai that would enable passengers to get on and off a small craft,” Sullivan said.
But over the years, the company has grown into a “mind-to-market” company that has its hands in everything from robotics, aerospace technology, medical research and artificial intelligence. As the company grew, he asked for his wife’s help with the legal and financial side. She’s now the company’s chief operating officer.
From its now-sprawling headquarters in Chinatown that hosts its administrative offices and state of the art labs, it’s worked with academic institutions, governments and corporations around the globe.
Sullivan says he’s often asked why he chose to keep the business in Hawaii rather than a “traditional” tech and science innovation hub like San Francisco.
“The answer is simple: it’s home,” Sullivan said. “We’re trying to share how we think of science, experimentation, engineering and skill of manufacturing from Hawaii to the world. That’s really what’s happening here.”
After an explosive oil drilling rig explosion in April 2010 off America’s Gulf Coast that killed 11 workers and caused the largest marine oil spill in U.S. history, Oceanit used nano-technology to develop a way to bond cement and steel to create more durable seals on rigs.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the company had been using AI to study how viruses work their way through the body. When the pandemic hit, the company had a head start and was among the first to work with the Food and Drug Administration to develop a working COVID-19 test.
“(Oceanit) has not only shaped the landscape of innovation in Hawaii, but also helped transform downtown Honolulu into a place where business, culture and creativity all come together,” Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi said. “(It) has shown that a company can be firmly rooted in Hawaii while making an impact around the world. (The company’s work) embodies the spirit of aloha and enhances our city’s reputation as a hub of innovation and creativity.”
Sullivan argues that having Oceanit outside of a place like Silicon Valley or New York allows the company to think outside the box “instead of being shaped by legacy industries or conventional thinking.” He runs the company under a philosophy he calls “intellectual anarchy.”
“We’re trying to create a community with social impact to create a more diverse economy based on innovation, imagination, creativity,” Sullivan said. “These local kids and young men women were very smart and talented. We put them in these programs, and they compete around the world. They’re fearless, they fight harder, they give it everything”
Hawaii leaders have been working to promote high tech and manufacturing jobs in the islands for the last two decades in hopes of offering high-paying jobs to residents. In particular, many Hawaii students have sought study and work opportunities off-island in tech and engineering fields in places with more established business and investor footprints in those fields.
U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda, who has been vocal about encouraging more tech literacy and science funding in the islands, said “walk through those doors, and we’re talking about real opportunities and futures, really good futures for our kids, and as many of us have had this conversation, it’s about how we keep our keiki, our very best and brightest right here in Hawaii.”
“This era we’re going to see, as everyone knows, extraordinary explosions in robotics, extraordinary explosions in artificial intelligence,” Gov. Josh Green said. “(Oceanit) is going to be one of the places that those things happen.”
Oceanit has landed several contracts with the Pentagon. It’s looked at ways to reduce traumatic brain injuries for troops working with heavy artillery, has worked on ways to maximize the protein in food that service members take with them into the field, and has worked on sensitive communications programs.
But it’s also working on broader medical and food research, engineering, computer science and tracking climate change and how it can affect communities and businesses.
“All of this has been grown from scratch here in Hawaii, and we are literally working around the world,” Sullivan said. “So with the power of these ideas, what I end up doing is creating the space for (our employees) to bring it every day. So I’m very lucky to work with these people.”
(Article and photo by KEVIN KNODELL / [email protected], Engineering company Oceanit turns 40 | Honolulu Star-Advertiser)
