Gecko Robotics inks $71m USN Deal
Image courtesy Gecko Robotics
Co-Founders - Jake Loosararian and Troy Demmer. Image courtesy Gecko Robotics
The U.S. Navy and GSA have awarded Gecko Robotics a five-year IDIQ contract with a $71 million ceiling to deploy artificial intelligence and robotics to assess and maintain the health of military assets. Gecko will start work with 18 ships in the U.S. Pacific Fleet with the initial award worth up to $54m over a five-year period. Customers in all services will have access to this government-wide vehicle.
The Chief of Naval Operations has set a target of 80% fleet readiness, which Gecko will have a crucial role in helping to meet. Gecko’s AI and robotic technology purports to identify repairs up to 50 times faster and more accurately than manual methods, reducing maintenance delays and boosting battle readiness. This work will be carried out across destroyers, amphibious warships and littoral combat ships.
“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.”
"Where value hasn’t improved, that’s where opportunity lives. Cracking the cost equation is just as important as cracking the physics equation,” said Justin Fanelli, Chief Technology Officer for the Department of the Navy. "We're now seeing solutions that make innovation adoption easier and in doing so save time, money and risk. When these American companies, pure play defense and dual use companies like Gecko Robotics choose to do hard things and move the needle on our outcome metrics—not by percentage points, but by orders of magnitude—it results in faster, better portfolio management."
Data from the U.S. Navy has shown that Gecko significantly reduces the lead time and work hours associated with maintenance cycles while increasing the availability of data and finding defects that cannot be done through traditional methods. A single robotic evaluation and digital rendering of a flight deck eliminated over 3 months of potential maintenance delay days.
Image courtesy Gecko Robotics
