Who is Stockton Rush, the 'daredevil' CEO of OceanGate and one of the 5 on board the Titan submersible?

• Stockton Rush wanted to be able to go underwater beyond scuba diving and founded OceanGate in 2009.

• He tested the Titan submersible himself, taking it to a depth of 13,000 feet in December 2018.

• Rush has frequently remarked on the balance between risk, innovation and safety in his field.

One of the passengers aboard the Titan submersible that went missing on Sunday was the company's own cofounder, 61-year-old Stockton Rush.

On Thursday, OceanGate confirmed that Rush and the other four crewmembers were believed to be dead. Debris of the sub was found near the Titanic wreck, and US Coast Guard officials said in a press conference on Thursday that the debris is "consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber."

Rush and four fellow adventurers were still uncontactable Wednesday from within the OceanGate sub after it set out to descend 13,000 feet to view the Titanic. Multiple agencies were engaged in the search, with time fast running out.

The trip is one of several that have been taken aboard the Titan, which began offering visits to the wreck in 2021, a news release from the company shows.

In past media appearances, Rush appears calm, collegiate and telegenic. With silver hair and business-casual attire, he looks like he might be more at home on the golf course than thousands of feet under the sea. However, questions are now swirling about some of his decisions related to the submersible.

Rush has described himself as having been "born into" wealth and then "grew it," according to a 2017 Bloomberg profile.

The grandson of an oil and gas magnate, he became a private investor alongside working in aviation, earning his pilot's license at the age of 19, the outlet reported.

In 2009 Rush founded OceanGate Expeditions, which remains a private company, with entrepreneur Guillermo Söhnlein, who's since left, according to Bloomberg. Per OceanGate marketing copy, the company is "dedicated to direct human exploration of the undersea world."

"I founded OceanGate ... when I discovered that you really can't go in a sub, other than a tourist sub in Hawaii," Rush previously told marine tech company Teledyne Marine on its podcast.

"Going underwater beyond scuba diving depth is something that's not really accessible, and I wanted to change that," he added. "I wanted to change how people relate to the ocean."

This is a passion that's driven Rush for years, according to a 2019 profile in the Smithsonian Magazine, which described him as a "daredevil inventor."

Growing up in San Francisco, Rush planned on exploring space. To this end, the Smithsonian reported, he became one of the world's youngest commercial pilots, before realizing, just as the age of space tourism was emerging, that the stars weren't his dream — it was the deep sea.

"I really wanted to be a space explorer, and I realized a little later in life that every species to be discovered in our solar system is probably in the ocean," he told Teledyne Marine.

Rush has spoken several times over the years of the unexploited commercial and scientific possibilities of the earth's waters, much of which remain unexplored.

"We've got to understand how the planet responds to climate change. It's all in the ocean, and we know almost nothing. So I'm really excited to do that," Rush said at a summit held by GeekWire last year.

Rush started out by cobbling together a mini-submarine in 2006 using parts and a blueprint from a retired US Navy commander, per the Smithsonian.

It was in that vessel that he caught what he described as "the deep disease," the magazine reported. By 2009, he had registered OceanGate and began acquiring vessels.

"What I wanted to do with the business was just move the needle, get people excited about the ocean, and discover what was out there," he said at the GeekWire summit.

The company bought the submersible Antipodes, two robotic vehicles, and support vessels and equipment, along with a second submersible in 2012, according to its website. That became a prototype for Titan — the vessel that has now gone missing in the Atlantic.

It was Rush himself who first tested the Titan in manned trips at incredible depths. After several progressively deeper dives, Rush took the Titan 13,000 feet deep in December 2018, an experience he described as "like being on the Starship Enterprise," according to the Smithsonian.

Rush wanted to fund his innovation in submersible design and exploration through offering tourist places — at a reported $250,000 a ticket — aboard the vessels.

In January 2020, OceanGate raised $18 million, per an SEC filing. Rush said the funding "was 100% insiders," GeekWire reported at the time.

His wife Wendy Rush also started working for the company in June 2021, and became its communications director in January 2022, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Meanwhile, astronaut Scott Parazynski joined the OceanGate board of directors in 2022, per a company news release.

Rush has frequently remarked on the balance between risk, innovation and safety in his work. In remarks to the Smithsonian, he lamented the chilling effect that passenger vessel regulation has put on innovation, saying that the field is "obscenely safe" due to regulation.

"But it also hasn't innovated or grown — because they have all these regulations," he added.

In 2018, a lawsuit from David Lochridge, OceanGate's former director of marine operations, highlighted concerns about "quality control and safety."

A 2019 company blog post said that a desire for rapid innovation was at the heart of OceanGate's decision not to classify its vessels, which is a standard regulatory process.

And in a November 2022 podcast, he lauded the benefits of taking risks in life to CBS reporter David Pogue, saying that "at some point, safety is just pure waste."

OceanGate, which did not respond to Insider's queries on these comments, has nonetheless written of its commitment to "high-level operational safety."

As of Wednesday, the search for the Titan continued, with its passengers, including Rush, believed to have about 17 hours of oxygen left.

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