Guillermo Söhnlein (born May 18, 1966) is an Argentine-American businessman, best known as the co-founder of deep-sea exploration company OceanGate. Söhnlein left the company in 2013, retaining a minority stake.

Professional career

In 1998, Söhnlein co-founded Milo, a

speech recognition Speech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers. It is also ...

technology company that was acquired by

Voxeo Voxeo Corporation was a technology company that specialized in providing development platforms for unified customer experience (self-service) and unified communications (real time communications) applications. Voxeo was headquartered in Orlando, ...

in 2001. After relocating to the Northern Virginia region outside

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

, he worked with a number of technology startup ventures, and advised several technology-related investment groups, incubators, and economic development agencies, and gave frequent talks about the field.

Space commercialization ventures

In 2003, Söhnlein founded the International Association of Space Entrepreneurs (IASE), which was a nonprofit organization created to encourage successful entrepreneurs from other industries to start aerospace-related ventures and start-ups. The group grew from 5 people to almost 1,500 individuals around the world. In 2010, the online community was transferred to the

Space Frontier Foundation The Space Frontier Foundation is an American space advocacy nonprofit corporation organized to promote the interests of increased involvement of the private sector, in collaboration with government, in the exploration and development of space. ...

for ongoing growth, and IASE officially disbanded. In 2006, he founded Space Angels Network, a for-profit angel investor group for early-stage aerospace ventures.

Venusian colony project

Söhnlein founded the Humans2Venus Foundation in January 2020 with entrepreneur Khalid Al-Ali. SFF planned sending thousands people above floating city on

Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is often called Earth's "twin" or "sister" planet for having almost the same size and mass, and the closest orbit to Earth's. While both are rocky planets, Venus has an atmosphere much thicker ...

around 2050. Söhnlein explained to ''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

'' "that enus'sinhospitable surface, which is around 864 degrees Fahrenheit (462 degrees Celsius), should not be an issue if humans simply build a home 50km in its air where conditions are reportedly similar to those on the Earth."

Ocean exploration ventures

In 2009, Söhnlein co-founded OceanGate with Stockton Rush, a venture that provided deep-sea crewed submersibles. On September 23, 2024, Söhnlein was interviewed by the

United States Coast Guard The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is the maritime security, search and rescue, and Admiralty law, law enforcement military branch, service branch of the armed forces of the United States. It is one of the country's eight Uniformed services ...

Marine Board of Investigation regarding the

Titan submersible implosion On 18 June 2023, Titan (submersible), ''Titan'', a submersible operated by the American tourism and expeditions company OceanGate, Implosion (mechanical process), imploded during an expedition to view the Wreck of the Titanic, wreck of the '' ...

. In 2010, he re-launched the Ocean Exploration Committee of the

Marine Technology Society The Marine Technology Society (MTS) is a professional society that serves an international community of approximately 2,000 ocean engineers, technologists, policy-makers, and educators. The goal of the society, which was founded in 1963, is to pro ...

, a nonprofit membership association supporting students and industry professionals in marine-related fields. In 2013, he founded Blue Marble Exploration, which organized high-profile expeditions to explore the oceans in crewed submersibles.

Sea-Space Connections

In 2011, Söhnlein founded the Sea-Space Initiative, a global project to provide collaboration in ocean and space industries. The first program, launched in May 2012, is the Sea-Space Summit, a global series of invitation-only workshops.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sohnlein, Guillermo 1966 births Businesspeople from Buenos Aires Living people Argentine emigrants to the United States American technology company founders American investors Businesspeople from San Jose, California University of California, Berkeley alumni University of California College of the Law, San Francisco alumni American social entrepreneurs