Gecko Robotics: 2025 CNBC Disruptor 50

Founders: Jake Loosararian (CEO), Troy Demmer
Launched: 2013
Headquarters: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Funding: $222 million
Valuation: $633 million (PitchBook)
Key Technologies: Artificial intelligence, robotics, digital twins, Internet of Things
Industry: Industrials
Previous appearances on Disruptor 50 list: 1 (No. 42 in 2024)

Igor Gnedo, Antonina Lepore & Adrianne Paerels

Across the world, thousands of U.S. military aircraft sit and wait to be deployed when needed. But making sure that fleet, which is increasingly aging, is ready for the moment is becoming increasingly complex, costly and time-consuming.

As Air Force Chief of Staff General David Allvin said at the Air and Space Force Association’s AFA Warfare Symposium in March, that older fleet of aircraft is finding “new and interesting ways to break.”

Ensuring that critical infrastructure — whether it’s aircraft and battleships or gas refineries and power plants — is not only working optimally but also proactively addressing things that may break in the future has become one of the top priorities for organizations across a variety of public and private sectors.

That’s a challenge that Pittsburgh-based Gecko Robotics is rising to meet. Gecko’s fleet of AI-assisted robots can analyze thousands of different crucial assets, leveraging analysis and algorithms to provide new data and insights into the health and usability of those assets, ultimately reducing costs and downtime.

The U.S. Navy expanded its partnership with Gecko Robotics in September, noting that it had increased the use of Gecko’s work on its fleet by 400% in 2024. Navy data showed that the robots had helped reduce lead time and work hours, as well as identify defects that may have otherwise been missed by traditional inspection methods. According to the Navy and Gecko, for one Navy asset, traditional methods captured less than 100 data points on key vital defense structures while Gecko’s platform captured more than 4.2 million.

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Gecko forged a new partnership with defense contractor L3Harris Technologies in April to help maintain military aircraft around the world. Rather than needing to have individual inspectors take hours and potentially days scouring over each plane to find faults, a Gecko operator can fly a drone around each aircraft remotely that collects high-quality images, which Gecko’s software can stitch together into a digital twin of that aircraft. With that 3D model, inspectors and service providers can inspect that aircraft remotely, allowing them to find the smallest dents and defects from across the world.

Gecko’s technology is increasingly being used by a variety of industries that are also heavily focused on reliability and efficiency like energy and manufacturing. In February, Gecko signed a $100 million deal with NAES, the U.S.’s largest independent power operator, that focuses on modernizing and optimizing power plants.

“The technology stacks that we have been building are compounding in value and impact at the very moment when energy, manufacturing, minerals, and defense are the exact markets where AI and robotics are having the most incredible impacts,” Jake Loosararian, the co-founder and CEO of Gecko Robotics, said on CNBC’s “Access Middle East” in May. “The companies that adopt that the quickest — to become AI and robotics-first companies — are the ones that are going to win; the ones that aren’t are going to have a very severe drop off.”

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