The paper presents the impact that the XPRIZE Foundation competition, the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE, has had on the development of current ocean mapping possibilities. A race for the prize has accelerated the development of innovative seabed mapping approaches that concentrated on new systems engineering or cutting-edge and innovative methods of existing equipment exploitation. The GEBCO-Nippon Foundation (NF) Alumni Team's entry is presented in details as a state of the art example of mature and robust ocean-mapping solution utilizing a high degree of autonomy and providing the possibilities of deep-ocean mapping that were unattainable before.