Jake Loosararian, co-founder and CEO of Gecko Robotics.
Source: Gecko Robotics
Gecko Robotics announced on Thursday that it raised $125 million in a Series D funding round, raising the AI and robotics company’s valuation to $1.25 billion.
The new round of funding means the Pittsburgh-based company has reached unicorn status, roughly twelve years after it was founded by Jake Loosararian. The company’s previous round of funding, a $173 million Series C in December 2023, valued it at $633 million.
To date, the company has raised $347 million from investors including USIT, XN, Founders Fund and Y Combinator. Its latest round was led by new investor Cox Enterprises.
Gecko Robotics, the two-time CNBC Disruptor 50 company, ranked No. 30 on the 2025 CNBC Disruptor 50 list. It uses a variety of robots that can climb, fly and swim around critical infrastructure, gaining valuable insights and data on the structures that is then parsed via Gecko’s AI-powered operating platform, Cantilever. That information is then used by organizations to optimize, maintain and monitor the infrastructure.
The company works across a variety of physical assets and industries, ranging from L3Harris Technologies and the U.S. Navy for critical military aircraft and ships; energy companies like NAES, the U.S.’s largest independent power operator, to modernize and optimize power plants, and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, where Gecko’s robots inspect gas facilities, tanks and other infrastructure.
“Gecko was built out of my college dorm room, to what it is today — the company ensuring the safety of public infrastructure, the optimization of energy and manufacturing facilities, and the modernization of militaries to deter global conflict,” Loosararian said in a statement announcing the latest round.
The company said it will use the additional funding to accelerate its growth, and its continued push into sectors like defense, energy and manufacturing. Gecko said that its Cantilever operating platform provides insights that can do everything from modernizing C-130 aircraft to recommending how a power plant can operate at up to 5% greater efficiency.
“While much of the tech industry is focused on consumer AI applications, Gecko Robotics is using AI to address an important, underappreciated challenge – the building and maintenance of critical infrastructure,” stated Trae Stephens, partner at Founders Fund, and also co-founder and executive chairman of defense tech company Anduril, the 2025 No. 1 Disruptor, in the deal statement. “Gecko’s business continues to grow as organizations across a wide variety of sectors realize this work is more safely and thoroughly performed by sensors and robots than humans,” he added.
Sign up for our weekly, original newsletter that goes beyond the annual Disruptor 50 list, offering a closer look at list-making companies and their innovative founders.
