GECKO A ‘DISRUPTOR’
Pittsburgh startup’s spotlight grows after CNBC’s designation
Gecko Robotics was named a top 50 “disruptor” company by CNBC Tuesday, the first time a Pittsburgh company has made the national lineup since Duolingo in 2020.
A Philadelphia company, TK, made the annual list in 2022. CNBC has been choosing private startups based on their innovative ideas and market-disrupting potential since 2013.
For Gecko, it’s merely the latest recognition in a string of successes that have given the North Shore-based startup national attention. The latest came in March when it was named one of the most innovative companies in the world by Fast Company.
The spotlight sometimes overlooks the fact that Gecko’s rise is a fundamentally
Pittsburgh story.
Its bots aren’t slender or sexy. They solve a practical purpose, and one tied to the city’s history. A sign near the door of the Nova Place headquarters reads: “100 years ago, Pittsburgh produced 69% of the world’s steel. We’re back to see how we did.”
Inside, engineers hone magnetized bots that scale rusted walls, scanning for cracks and defects that might cause a bridge to collapse or an old tank to explode. The issues Gecko’s system finds might be expensive to fix, but they’re far cheaper than cleaning up a disaster.
“People don’t think about the power plant that supplies our energy, the bridge we commute across, or the factory that supplies thousands of jobs in our communities until things fail. But in 2024, with advances in robotics and AI, things shouldn’t fail,” CEO Jake Loosararian said in a statement.
“That’s the mission we appreciate CNBC highlighting with this announcement and the goal my 300 colleagues and I wake up every morning excited to work on.”
Gecko “disrupted an industry worldwide, right here from the North Shore,” Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said on a visit in March.
In just the past few years, Gecko’s reach has expanded globally, from India to Brazil. Siemens Energy signed a three-year contract for sites in Europe and last month, the company notched a $30 million deal in the Middle East.
While many of Gecko’s technicians live in Houston, close to the oil and gas companies, much of the engineering is done in Pittsburgh. There are software experts from Carnegie Mellon University and technicians like Barry Stevenson, who landed at Gecko when another machine shop in town shut down.
When he first arrived, Gecko was still a scrappy operation in a suburban warehouse, Mr. Stevenson said. He didn’t need a sonar-enabled robot to tell him the walls were in need of repair.
But companies don’t start out with a 70,000 square foot testing bay, he said, where custom Gecko branding adorns the walls of the inhouse basketball court.
The company was named one of the best places to work last year by Pittsburgh Business Times. The trophy for that honor sits next to a sign from Mr. Shapiro’s last visit. “Keep disrupting,” the governor wrote in his silverSharpied autograph.
Founded in 2013, Gecko represents the kind of company the Shapiro administration is hoping to grow across the state. And its focus — inspecting critical infrastructure, including naval vessels — is the kind of practical use case other Pittsburgh startups are chasing.
“You have this incredible team of co-founders that saw a real problem ... and did what Pittsburghers do best: found a pragmatic solution,” said Brian Kennedy, vice president of operations and government affairs at the Pittsburgh Technology Council.
“And it turned out that there were a whole bunch of industries that needed that same type of pragmatism. What they’ve tackled with the oil and gas industry, for example, has been a problem in search of a solution for at least a decade.”
As Gecko scales, it’s employing operators on multiple continents, while also providing a landing pad for the city’s skilled workers and college graduates.
The company hopes to expand its workforce by 40% this year — an expansion that could help some of the 145 employees set to be laid off from autonomous vehicle company Motional stay in the city.
“It’s the place to work in Pittsburgh’s robotic industry,” Mr. Kennedy said. ”They are an employer of choice for sure, [and] they’ve assembled a really special team.”