The US Navy and the General Services Administration have more than quadrupled the ceiling on Gecko Robotics’ ship-inspection contract to $300 million, just six months after the initial $71 million award — an expansion the company says will accommodate rapid robotic deployment across the fleet.
The ceiling increase, announced on October 20, covers Gecko’s AI and robotic inspection work for the Navy: wall-climbing robots, drones and fixed sensors that collect data on ships and submarines — hulls, decks, components and welds — with AI building models that identify current and future structural problems, including ones the human eye cannot see. A contract ceiling is the maximum the government may order under the deal, not money already spent.
Komodo And The Deck-Scanning System
Central to the expansion is Komodo, Gecko’s proprietary robotic system. Komodo scans through thick, non-skid deck coatings without stripping or damaging them, producing a full-deck heatmap of corrosion and material thickness. That lets repair teams pinpoint damage and plan work before a ship enters drydock — planning that previously could only begin after maintenance had started.
The data feeds Cantilever, Gecko’s AI-powered platform, which turns the robot-collected datasets into decisions about structures. The company says its technology can save the Navy up to $8 million in repair costs per ship and find structural issues up to 50 times faster than traditional methods, cutting inspections from months to days. Those figures are the company’s own claims, made in its announcement, and are presented as the return that justified expanding the deal fourfold after six months.
The Readiness Target Behind The Expansion
The increase comes as the Department of the Navy treats fleet readiness as a national security priority: every additional day a warship spends in maintenance is a day it cannot deter adversaries, respond to crises or project power. The Chief of Naval Operations has set a target of 80% fleet readiness, and Gecko says its work will play a crucial role in reaching it.
“The conversation around AI and robotics in defense is no longer about experimental technology. It’s about delivering measurable and impactful returns,” said Jake Loosararian, Gecko’s co-founder and chief executive. “With savings of millions of dollars per ship, months of inspections turning into days and warships returning to sea faster, the U.S. Navy is demonstrating to the world how to deploy technology at scale.”
Why It Matters
Gecko’s expansion is a data point in the defence-AI market that cuts against the demo-driven pattern of much military AI news. This is not a new weapon or a research contract: it is an inspection business whose robots and models are already inside Navy maintenance, and whose contract ceiling grew fourfold in half a year on claimed, measurable savings per ship. For the wider market — including the agent and robotics stories this site tracks, such as the Army’s ECHOTRIBBLE programme at the experimental end and Eka Robotics’ $150 million raise for physical AI — Gecko shows where defence money is already flowing: unglamorous maintenance work with a readiness target attached.
It also sits naturally beside the governance debate running in parallel, including the UN’s new forum on military AI: the same week the UN opens a process on responsible military AI, the US Navy is scaling an AI supplier on return-on-investment grounds. Adoption and oversight are now racing in public.
Background
Gecko Robotics, based in Pittsburgh, builds robots that climb, crawl, fly and swim to inspect critical infrastructure, and AI software — its Cantilever platform — that turns the collected data into maintenance decisions. Its customers span energy, oil and gas and manufacturing as well as the US Air Force and Navy, including work connected to nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers. The Navy relationship began with the $71 million indefinite-delivery contract awarded six months before this expansion; the move to a $300 million ceiling is the relationship’s first major step up.
Source: Gecko Robotics’ official announcement via GlobeNewswire, October 20; Tectonic, reporting the Navy contract expansion.
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