Gecko Robotics, the Pittsburgh-born company that builds autonomous robots to inspect industrial and military infrastructure, announced plans this week to open a new 10,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Sewickley, Pennsylvania. The company says the facility will be operational within weeks, marking a significant physical expansion for one of the region's most celebrated technology success stories.
The announcement came at the Pennsylvania Defense and Innovation Summit held at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle last week, where Gecko cofounder Jake Loosararian appeared alongside President Donald Trump and Sen. David McCormick. The two-day summit, which drew more than 1,000 attendees and catalyzed over $10 billion in national investment announcements, served as the backdrop for a string of Western Pennsylvania wins that underscored the region's growing role in the national defense technology economy.
Gecko's robots crawl across tanks, pipelines, boilers, and other heavy industrial and military structures, using sensors and AI to detect corrosion, cracks, and structural weakness before they become catastrophic failures. The company markets the technology as a safer, faster, and more accurate alternative to human inspectors who traditionally perform these assessments at great personal risk. The Navy contract, which was secured in March and spans five years with a ceiling value of $71 million, will put Gecko's machines to work assessing and helping maintain select military assets across the country.
Sewickley: A Strategic Choice
The choice of Sewickley for a manufacturing footprint reflects the broader pattern of Pittsburgh-area tech companies choosing to grow within the region rather than relocating operations to more established tech corridors. Sewickley, a historic borough along the Ohio River just northwest of Pittsburgh, has a strong industrial heritage and sits in a part of Allegheny County that has seen renewed investment in recent years. For Gecko, whose headquarters and core engineering teams remain in Pittsburgh, a nearby production facility keeps the supply chain short and talent local.
Gecko was founded in 2018 by Loosararian and Andrew Ladd, who met as engineering students and built their first robot in a garage. The company has since grown into a unicorn valued at more than $1 billion, with customers in oil and gas, utilities, and now military defense. Its trajectory from Pittsburgh startup to defense technology partner represents exactly the kind of homegrown success story the city's innovation ecosystem has been cultivating for over a decade through institutions like Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, AlphaLab, and Innovation Works.
A Region on the Defense Tech Map
Gecko's expansion is one piece of a larger mosaic of defense-related investments landing in Western Pennsylvania. At the same summit, EOS Energy announced a multi-million-dollar partnership with the Department of War to build battery storage technology for the Golden Dome missile defense system. The Regional Industrial Development Corporation revealed plans for a classified $10 million secure facility at Hazelwood Green's Mill 19, which will house companies working on sensitive government contracts. And CMU partnered with venture studio Carnegie Foundry to launch a new Autonomous Systems Manufacturing Platform aimed at helping American drone companies scale production rapidly.
Together, these announcements reinforce Pittsburgh's identity as a serious node in the national defense innovation network, a designation that carries economic weight well beyond any single company or contract. For a region that spent decades rebuilding after the collapse of its steel industry, becoming a hub for the robots and AI systems that guard national infrastructure feels like a fitting second act. Gecko Robotics, with its Sewickley facility set to open any day now, is building that future one crawling robot at a time.