Billionaire Plans to Take $20M Sub to Titanic Wreck Following Titan Sub Disaster

“I want to show people worldwide that while the ocean is extremely powerful, it can be wonderful and enjoyable,” billionaire Larry Connor said

An Ohio billionaire is planning to take the journey in a submersible down to the Titanic wreckage after OceanGate’s fatal sub implosion.

Patrick Lahey, the co-founder and CEO of Triton Submarines, one of the leading manufacturers of personal submersibles, told The Wall Street Journal that one of his clients, Ohio real-estate investor Larry Connor, called him a few days after the fatal incident happened and asked him to create a submersible that could reach the Titanic.

“He called me up and said, ‘You know, what we need to do is build a sub that can dive to [Titanic-level depths] repeatedly and safely and demonstrate to the world that you guys can do that, and that Titan was a contraption,’ ” Lahey recalled.

As a result, he created a two-person vessel called the Triton 4000/2 Abyssal Explorer, which is listed on the company’s website for $20 million, per WSJ. According to the website, the submersible “is designed” for repeated trips to the deep ocean at a depth of about 4,000 meters, which is deeper than the Titanic's 3,800 depth.

Related: OceanGate CEO Joked 'What Could Go Wrong' Before 'Titan' Sub Implosion, New Documentary Reveals

Connor noted to the outlet that the vessel is made up of new “materials and technology” that had been previously unavailable saying, “Patrick has been thinking about and designing this for over a decade. But we didn’t have the materials and technology. You couldn’t have built this sub five years ago.”

The real-estate investor — who said he is unafraid of the deep ocean, having previously also dived down to the Mariana Trench — shared that he and Lahey plan to dive in the Triton 4000/2 Abyssal Explorer down to the Titanic to show that it can be done “safely.”

“I want to show people worldwide that while the ocean is extremely powerful, it can be wonderful and enjoyable and really kind of life-changing if you go about it the right way,” Connor told WSJ.

Related: 111 Years of Tragedy: How 'Titanic' Obsession Led to 'Titan' Nightmare — and What's Next for Wreck

Despite Connor’s interest in diving into the ocean's depths after the fatal implosion of OceanGate’s Titan sub in June 2023, Lahey admitted to the outlet that not everyone has felt the same.

“This tragedy had a chilling effect on people’s interest in these vehicles,” he admitted. “It reignited old myths that only a crazy person would dive in one of these things.”

However, he also noted that there was a big difference in quality between Titan’s submarines and OceanGate’s. Titan’s submarines are “classed” or certified as safe and up to code, while OceanGate used experimental designs and materials.

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Ray Dalio, a multibillionaire financier who bought a stake in Titan Submarines alongside Hollywood director James Cameron, told WSJ that despite the news of the OceanGate incident, he was still confident in submarines that were built up to code.

“In that situation they were experimental, they didn’t have certification, and they were not representative of what subs are,” Dalio said. “Anyone who is knowledgeable would have no reservations.”

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