Two Companies Go After the Inbox, and So Do We

Shipping runs on email. This week two software companies launched tools that try to bring order to it.

Ulysses Systems launched Finder. It reads the company's stream of emails and documents and sorts them by ship, port call, defect or other activity. A user can then ask a question by text or voice. Ulysses gives examples: why was a vessel delayed in port, what was done after a vetting observation, does the engineer's travel match the ship's latest arrival time? Ulysses says Finder can map information across more than 10,000 maritime processes and topics. The work builds on research with York University in Canada and IBM Canada.

GTMaritime launched GT Connect. It links a conversation to the vessel, the people, a task and the documents, so a discussion becomes a job with an owner. GTMaritime says it serves around 17,000 vessels and its mail system carries more than one million messages a day. In July it added AI that sorts and summarises incoming ship email.

The honest part. Neither company named a customer for the new product, and neither gave a result. No time saved, no accuracy figure. GTMaritime does not describe GT Connect itself as AI. And the Finder name is not new: Digital Ship reported an earlier Ulysses Finder in 2024, built at the request of the gas shipping company Exmar. So this is a new AI version of an existing idea, not a first.

The questions that matter. A tool that reads every email knows a lot. Who can search whose mailbox? Can a manager read a private message from a crew member? Does the answer show the original email, so you can check it? Where is the mail stored, and is it used to train anyone's model? Ask these before the demo, not after.

Disclosure: SeaQuest, the company behind this newsletter, builds BuzzRelay, an AI assistant for email, and fleet management software. Both companies in this story are competitors in some way. Read our view with that in mind. [Smart Maritime Network · Ulysses · Smart Maritime Network · GTMaritime · Splash247 · Digital Ship, 2024]

This story is part of the Maritime AI Digest of 4 October 2026.