Gecko Robotics lands $71M US Navy contract to deploy AI ship inspection robots across Pacific Fleet

US Navy Awards Contract to Gecko Robotics to Inspect Ships

The US Navy and the General Services Administration awarded a contract worth up to $71 million to Gecko Robotics to use its wall-climbing robots to assess the health of naval vessels, the company announced Tuesday. The five-year contract will initially cover as much as $54 million in work and allow agencies across the US government to access the technology. The initial effort will focus on 18 ships in the Pacific fleet including destroyers, amphibious ships and littoral combat ships, Gecko Chief Executive Officer Jake Loosararian said in an interview. Gecko Robotics will deploy robots to inspect critical structures such as hulls, decks and welds, the company said. The company's robots, drones and fixed sensors gather large volumes of structural data that can be analyzed by artificial intelligence to detect corrosion, cracks and other defects. Data from prior deployments on surface ships and submarines show the system can identify required repairs up to 50 times faster and more accurately than traditional inspection. That could reduce maintenance delays, according to Loosararian. The project is geared toward helping achieve a goal set to keep 80% of the fleet ready for deployment.

US Pacific Fleet to deploy wall-climbing, flying robots on ships

WASHINGTON, March 17 (Reuters) - Gecko Robotics has landed a $71 million contract to deploy wall-climbing robots and artificial intelligence across U.S. Navy ships in the Pacific Fleet, the Pittsburgh-based company said, in what executives described as a first-of-its-kind maintenance contract awarded to a robotics firm. Gecko's robots climb hulls, crawl through ballast tanks and fly through confined spaces, ⁠collecting structural and material data that feeds the company's AI-powered software platform, called Cantilever. The system can identify repairs up to 50 times faster and more accurately than manual inspections, according to the privately-held company. In one documented case, a single robotic evaluation of a flight deck eliminated more than three months of potential maintenance delays, ⁠the company said. The deal represents a significant scaling of robotic technology. Gecko currently operates a fleet of roughly 250 robots across both commercial and government customers, and plans to build ⁠50 to 60 more this year. The five-year indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract, awarded through the U.S. Navy and General Services Administration, will ⁠see Gecko begin work on 18 ships across the Pacific Fleet, with an initial award worth up ⁠to $54 million. Destroyers, amphibious warships and littoral combat ships are among the vessels included in the program. Reporting by Mike Stone in Washington; editing by David Gaffen Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab * Suggested Topics: * Artificial Intelligence Mike Stone Thomson Reuters Mike Stone is a Reuters reporter covering the U.S. arms trade and defense industry. Most recently Mike has been focused on the Golden Dome missile defense shield. Mike also spends a lot of his time writing on Ukraine and how industry has adapted, or faltered as it supports that conflict. Mike, a New Yorker, has extensively covered how the U.S. has supplied Ukraine with weapons, the cadence, decisions and milestones that have had battlefield impacts. Before his time in Washington Mike's coverage focused on mergers and acquisitions for oil and gas companies, financial institutions, defense companies, consumer product makers, retailers, real estate giants, and telecommunications companies.

Gecko Robotics brings its AI to U.S. Navy ship repair in latest next-gen defense tech deal

The company said its robots -- capable of flying, swimming, and climbing critical infrastructure -- use cameras and sensors to condense a three-month process down to as little as two days. Gecko also said the robots can assess necessary maintenance 50 times faster than other manual techniques. "This is the kind of stuff that was never possible before, and it's the reason why it's taken 18 months to get a destroyer out of the dry dock," CEO Jake Loosararian told CNBC in an interview. "This is not acceptable anymore." Loosararian said Gecko will support the Navy's goal of 80% fleet readiness by 2027 and streamline ship production so that soldiers can focus on fighting and other threats. The U.S. is increasing its reliance on defense technology startups like Gecko as it seeks to modernize dated U.S. military systems amid rising geopolitical tensions. These companies are increasingly disrupting traditional mainstay defense contractors with innovative artificial intelligence and autonomous tech solutions. "Software is not enough, and your ability to use artificial intelligence to predict and make decision advantages is is only as good as the data inputs," Loosararian said. "This is a fundamental shift, and what Gecko does right now, it's never been done before by any robotics company in the military." Since taking office, President Donald Trump has prioritized scaling and restoring U.S. shipbuilding capabilities, which have long lagged behind China. Last month, the administration released a multi-page plan to resurrect the struggling sector. Over the years, Gecko has teamed up with mining, manufacturing, energy and defense businesses to improve aging equipment and slash repair times. That includes defense contractor L3Harris Technologies and mining giant Freeport-McMoRan.

Gecko Robotics lands $71M Navy deal

The Pittsburgh startup's AI platform will create digital twins of Pacific Fleet vessels, starting with 18 ships, as the Navy races to fix a maintenance crisis costing up to $20 billion a year. Roughly 40% of the United States Navy's fleet is unavailable at any given time. Ships are queued in dry dock. Maintenance cycles stretch across months. The cost of the backlog, according to Gecko Robotics CEO Jake Loosararian, runs somewhere between $13 billion and $20 billion annually. And as he puts it, "at a time when you need every asset you can get, that's pretty critical." On Tuesday, the Pittsburgh startup announced it had signed a five-year IDIQ (indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity) contract with the US Navy and the General Services Administration, with a ceiling of $71 million. The initial award stands at $54 million. It is the largest contract the Navy has ever awarded Gecko Robotics , and the largest robotics deal the Navy has signed to date. The work begins immediately with 18 ships in the US Pacific Fleet, destroyers, amphibious warships, and littoral combat ships, over the next nine months. Gecko's wall-climbing robots, drones, and sensors will crawl across hulls, decks, and welds, gathering data points that would take human inspectors weeks to collect. That raw data feeds into Cantilever, the company's AI-powered operating platform, which converts it into a detailed digital twin of each vessel: a living, updatable model of the ship's structural health. The company says its technology can identify necessary repairs up to 50 times faster and more accurately than manual inspection techniques. Critically, the inspection can happen before a ship even reaches dry dock, meaning the right parts and personnel can be staged in advance, rather than the process beginning only once the vessel is already out of service. Defense One reported that just 41% of ships completed repairs on time in 2025, well short of the Navy's 71% goal. The Navy has since reset its target to above 60%, with the broader ambition of reaching 80% fleet combat surge readiness by 2027. Gecko's contract structure is also notable for its scope: because it runs through the GSA, any branch of the Department of Defense can access the company's AI and robotics under the agreement, not just the Navy. "Readiness isn't just a metric. It's all that matters," Loosararian said in a statement. "This growing partnership is about the unfair advantages Gecko is deploying to our Navy and how prediction, through our robotics and AI products, ensures our brave men and women are the most advantaged in the world in their fight to defend freedom." The contract arrives at a moment of heightened urgency around US shipbuilding capacity. The Trump administration released a multi-page plan in February to revive the sector, which has fallen significantly behind China. Pennsylvania Senator Dave McCormick, in a statement, said the deal demonstrated how "engineers, researchers, and skilled tradesmen from a great Pennsylvania company are leading advances in technology, artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and robotics and giving our military the capabilities it needs for the next generation of American defence." Gecko is not new to the Navy. The company, co-founded by Loosararian and Troy Demmer, now its president, has previously deployed its TOKA series robots on destroyers, amphibious vessels, and aircraft carriers, and has worked with defence prime contractor L3Harris on digital twins for military aircraft. Earlier this year it partnered with BPMI, a contractor for the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Programme, to cut inspection times on nuclear carrier and submarine components by up to 90%. The company was last valued at $1.25 billion following a Series D round led by Cox Enterprises in June 2025, which brought its total funding to $173 million. It remains private. The TOKA robots that will crawl the Pacific Fleet's hulls are the same ones Gecko has been deploying in power generation, oil and gas, and heavy manufacturing for years, the argument being that the physical world, whether it's a coal boiler or a guided-missile destroyer, yields its secrets the same way: slowly, and only to whoever has the patience to look closely enough.

Wall-climbing robots to inspect US Navy ships in $71M AI push

The initial award is valued at up to $54 million, with access extended across all military services through a government-wide vehicle. The effort targets a long-standing bottleneck of maintenance delays in naval operations that can keep ships out of service for months. By integrating robotics and AI, Gecko aims to significantly cut inspection times and improve repair accuracy across destroyers, amphibious warships, and littoral combat ships. The contract aligns with the Navy's goal of achieving 80 percent fleet readiness by 2027, a benchmark that depends heavily on reducing downtime and improving maintenance efficiency. Gecko's system relies on a mix of wall-climbing robots, drones, and fixed sensors that collect detailed structural data from ships, including hulls, welds, decks, and internal components. These machines operate in environments that are difficult or unsafe for human inspectors. The collected data is processed using the company's artificial intelligence platform, which builds digital models of assets and flags both visible and hidden defects.

Pittsburgh's Gecko Robotics announces $71M deal to deploy technology within U.S. Navy ships

Pittsburgh's Gecko Robotics has secured a $71 million contract to deploy its artificial intelligence and robotics technology within United States Navy warships. Gecko Robotics announced the new deal Tuesday morning, saying that it will start with with 18 different ships within the Navy's Pacific fleet. The Pittsburgh-based robotics company's technology is expected to help identify repairs on ships up to 50 times faster and more accurately than using manual methods, which will help reduce delays and boost overall ship readiness. Gecko said the work will be carried out across destroyers, amphibious warships, and combat ships within the Navy fleet. "Readiness isn't just a metric. It's all that matters," said Jake Loosararian, Co-founder and CEO of Gecko. "This growing partnership is about the unfair advantages Gecko is deploying to our Navy and how prediction, through our robotics and AI products, ensures our brave men and women are the most advantaged in the world in their fight to defend freedom. Today, we announce not a contract, but a new standard that is universal across all industries: if it isn't ready, it doesn't count." Gecko said that its wall-climbing robots, drones, and sensors can collect data on ships and submarines and identify current and future structural problems that can't be seen by the human eye. In a statement, Pennsylvania Senator Dave McCormick said he's seen firsthand how Gecko is advancing Pennsylvania's manufacturing legacy that has helped shape America's national defense for more than 200 years. "The partnership between Gecko Robotics and the U.S. Navy shows how engineers, researchers, and skilled tradesmen from a great Pennsylvania company are leading advances in technology, artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and robotics and giving our military the capabilities it needs for the next generation of American defense," Sen. McCormick said. Gecko's work on the first 18 ships within the U.S. Navy's Pacific fleet is expected to take place over a five-year period.

US Pacific Fleet to Deploy Wall-Climbing, Flying Robots on Ships

WASHINGTON, March 17 (Reuters) - ⁠Gecko ⁠Robotics has landed ⁠a $71 million contract to deploy wall-climbing robots and artificial intelligence across U.S. Navy ships in the Pacific Fleet, the Pittsburgh-based company said, in what executives described as ⁠a ⁠first-of-its-kind maintenance contract awarded to a robotics firm. Gecko's robots climb hulls, crawl through ballast tanks and fly through confined spaces, collecting structural and material data that feeds the company's AI-powered software platform, called Cantilever. The system ⁠can identify ⁠repairs up to ⁠50 times faster and more accurately than manual inspections, according to the privately-held company. ⁠In one documented case, a single robotic evaluation of a flight deck eliminated more than three months of potential maintenance delays, the company said. The ⁠deal represents a significant scaling of robotic technology. Gecko currently ⁠operates a fleet of roughly 250 robots across both commercial and government customers, and plans to build 50 to 60 more this year. The five-year indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract, awarded through the U.S. Navy and General Services Administration, will see Gecko begin work on 18 ships across the ⁠Pacific Fleet, with an initial award worth up to $54 million. Destroyers, amphibious warships and littoral combat ships are among the vessels included in the program. (Reporting by Mike Stone in Washington; editing by David Gaffen)