Tidal AI Underwater Camera and Autonomous Feeding

Tidal (TidalX AI Inc.) is an aquaculture technology company developed within X, Alphabet's moonshot factory, and now independent, with a US address in California and TidalX Norway AS in Bergen. It addresses the limited visibility salmon farmers have inside sea pens, where growth, welfare, sea lice and feeding are hard to measure without handling fish.

The system combines autonomous robotic underwater cameras and precision sensors with machine learning models built on Google Cloud. It delivers real-time biomass estimation, sea lice detection, fish welfare monitoring and autonomous feeding control, and its hardware is certified to the Norwegian NS9415 standard. Models were trained with Mowi and tested in hundreds of commercial pens. In 2026 SalMar began deploying Tidal cameras, environmental sensors and autonomous feeding at several sites.

• Autonomous robotic cameras: underwater units that move through the pen to observe fish.
• Biomass estimation: real-time weight and growth tracking from imaging.
• Sea lice detection: automated identification of lice levels on fish.
• Welfare monitoring: continuous tracking of fish condition and behaviour.
• Autonomous feeding: AI-controlled feeding based on observed fish response.
• Cloud platform: models on Google Cloud with NS9415-certified hardware and environmental sensors.

• Industrial offshore cage farms monitoring fish growth and feeding remotely.
• Seafood groups piloting AI feeding control to lower feed conversion ratios in marine cages.
• Research partnerships adapting in-pen camera models to tropical marine species.

• Provides continuous biomass and growth data without crowding or handling fish.
• Improves feed conversion and reduces feed waste through autonomous feeding control.
• Detects sea lice and welfare issues earlier for timely treatment decisions.
• Supports risk forecasting and evaluation of treatment effectiveness from in-pen data.

Large salmon producers are automating sea farms to cut feed costs, meet welfare rules and manage sea lice with less handling. Vietnam is developing industrial offshore cage farming for marine fish, where remote AI monitoring and autonomous feeding could reduce the need for on-site labour.

Tidal was developed within X, Alphabet's moonshot factory, and operates as TidalX AI Inc. in the US and TidalX Norway AS in Bergen, led by CEO Rajesh Jadhav. Mowi helped train its AI models, and Google Cloud is a technology partner. TIME recognised it among the best inventions of 2023, and SalMar signed a strategic collaboration in April 2026.