Gecko’s a unicorn: It’s been a big year for Pittsburgh-based Gecko Robotics. In the past few months, they’ve signed a $100M deal with a top US power grid operator, partnered with L3Harris on remote aircraft maintenance, and—last but certainly not least—hit unicorn status last week after raising $125M at a $1.25B valuation.
That’s a lot of green for a company from Steel City.
Raise deets: Gecko’s $125M Series D was led by Cox Enterprises—new to the table—and returning investors including Y Combinator and Founders Fund. The company raised a $173M Series C back in 2023 that brought its valuation to $633M. For the mathematically-challenged among us, that’s now doubled in just two years. Good time to be a Gecko, we’d say.
Troy Demmer, Gecko’s co-founder and Chief Product Officer, told Tectonic that the robotics company plans to use the cash to double down on their work with the US military and—hopefully—expand operations to work with more allies abroad.
What they do: Gecko was founded in 2013 by college friends Demmer and Jake Loosararian, and from the get-go it has used robots and fixed sensors to analyze the health of critical infrastructure.
It’s not all about the robots though: Demmer says Gecko’s “core technology is software. It’s software first, hardware-enabled.” Here’s what the company does:
- Deploys climbing, crawling, and swimming robots to inspect hard-to-reach infrastructure like power plants, submarines, and aircraft carriers
- Uses ultrasonic sensors and AI through its Cantilever platform to detect corrosion, cracks, and structural issues before they become failures
- Produces 3D visualizations and maintenance insights that help clients—including major grid operators, the US Navy, and Air Force—plan repairs, extend asset life, and avoid downtime
Robots-as-a-Service: Rather than focusing on selling as many products as possible, Gecko sells its software- and robots-as-a-service to customers.
“We don’t actually have to manufacture millions of robots to be successful,” Demmer said. “We can use these robots over and over. The Navy is served by a dozen robots, and it just works because they can keep being reutilized.”
Repairing the wheel: Demmer said that most of the DoD’s infrastructure has reached the end of useful life. And as this year’s NDAA debates have shown, getting big new programs through Congress is not easy. Instead of building massive new platforms with years-long acquisition timelines, Gecko argues it’s faster—and smarter—to maintain and extend the life of what the military already has.
“You go and fight with the military you have, not the one you can build in 10 years,” Demmer said.
And his company (and its data) knows exactly how ready that military is to fight. “We’ve got the largest data repository on the built world. When it comes to structural integrity and machine health, we know how these assets perform over time.”
Looking forward: Demmer told Tectonic that Gecko decided to raise capital because “we want to be able to go faster.” Here’s what he said they’d do with that money.
- Growth: Increase headcount (now at 350 people) and invest in each of the company’s six offices
- Expand internationally: “There’s a lot of demand to go to the Middle East and to go to South America, and there are key anchor customers that we’re starting to develop in those regions,” particularly in the energy sector
- DC push: “We’re just really doubling down on that because of the demand signal and the opportunity we see ahead”
- Mystery—for now: “There’s some other things we can’t yet announce, but there’s some pretty strategic territories that we’ve been called into. We’ll have more on that soon”
Gecko in the Pentagon: Demmer hinted that there could be a few more big, military-flavored announcements in the works. “We have a lot of exciting things happening with the Navy, both on the shipbuilding side and on the sustainment side. We have some big awards that we’re going to be ready to announce pretty soon,” he told Tectonic.