As an engineering student at Grove City College in 2012, Jake Loosararian visited a local power plant that was suffering from persistent downtime,
costing the facility millions of dollars per month.
The Realization
It was upon that visit he was told of a person that recently died after falling from elevated heights while trying to find structural defects in a boiler the size of a football field. He knew there had to be a better way.
Jake returned to his dorm room and started building a robot that could climb walls while carrying ultrasonic sensors and cameras.
The Prototype
After spending weeks on site adapting the robot in the depths of the dirty boiler, Jake's prototype successfully scaled and located the recurring issue, preventing future failure.
After connecting with his old college roommate, Troy Demmer, who was in the health sector building tools to diagnose the human body, the pair joined forces to become Cofounders of Gecko in 2013.
The Startup
Gecko was part of Y Combinator's Winter 2016 batch, becoming one of the first robotics companies to be backed by the startup accelerator.
Gecko now helps to build, sustain, and modernize the world’s most critical infrastructure, working with Fortune 100 companies in energy, oil and gas, and manufacturing sectors around the world, as well as the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy. You can read about Jake’s founding story as detailed by CNBC, or in his own words in Fortune.
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The Growth
The company has continued to raise funding, with its latest Series D round taking place in June 2025, raising $125M and valuing the company at $1.25B.
Gecko Robotics continues to operate internationally, with offices in Houston, Boston, New York City, Washington DC, and Abu Dhabi -while remaining Headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA.
"Gecko now builds, maintains and modernizes the world’s most critical infrastructure across defense, energy, oil and gas, and manufacturing."
