money moves

Industrial robotics company raises $73M series C, prepares to grow Houston office

Gecko Robotics has over 50 Houston area employees working on robotics and software solutions for infrastructure. Photo via GeckoRobotics.com

A Pittsburgh-based tech company that has created a hardware and software solution for industrial asset management has closed its latest round of funding.

Gecko Robotics, which has a growing Houston office, has closed its series C funding round at $73 million. The round was led by XN with participation from Founders Fund, XYZ, Drive Capital, Snowpoint Ventures, Joe Lonsdale, Mark Cuban, Gokul Rajaram, and others.

Gecko's Houston office was stood up in 2019 as a way to further grow oil and gas industry customers. Gecko has over 100 customers within infrastructure, power, energy, and more, Troy Demmer, chief product officer and co-founder, tells InnovationMap. Gecko's customers include Dow Chemical, Marathon, Shell, and Chevron, to name a few.

“By opening up an office in Houston, we could not only better serve power generation customers in that region, but also really plant ourselves as a provider for oil and gas," Demmer says.

The company's technology includes wall-climbing robots that can collect data on customer's equipment. The software component transform the collected data into actionable solutions. Demmer founded the company with CEO Jake Loosararian to, according to their mission statement, "protect today’s critical infrastructure, and give form to tomorrow’s."

“Our goal is really to digitize these industries and make them more safe and environmentally friendly and really make it a place where innovation happens," Demmer tells InnovationMap.

Demmer says the goal is to double their headcount over the next 12 to 18 months following this fresh funding. The company currently has 180 employees, with around 50 to 60 people based in their Houston office. Gecko has offices in Austin, New York City, Boston, and Europe.

"Gecko's unique combination of robotics and software radically improves the ability to inspect, protect, and efficiently maintain critical infrastructure," says Tim Brown, partner at XN and lead investor in the round, in the press release. We are excited to partner with Jake and Troy as they extend Gecko's powerful technology into new geographies and industries, helping customers collect and make sense of physical data to optimize the safety and performance of their assets."

Trending News

Building Houston

 
 

Baylor College of Medicine's Lillie and Roy Cullen Tower is set to open in 2026. Rendering courtesy of BCM

Baylor College of Medicine has collected $100 million toward its $150 million fundraising goal for the college’s planned Lillie and Roy Cullen Tower.

The $100 million in gifts include:

  • A total of $30 million from The Cullen Foundation, The Cullen Trust for Health Care, and The Cullen Trust for Higher Education.
  • $12 million from the DeBakey Medical Foundation
  • $10 million from the Huffington Foundation
  • More than $45 million from members of Baylor’s Board of Trustees and other community donors, including the M.D. Anderson Foundation, the Albert and Margaret Alkek Foundation, and The Elkins Foundation.

“The Cullen Trust for Health Care is very honored to support this building along with The Cullen Foundation and The Cullen Trust for Higher Education,” Cullen Geiselman Muse, chair of The Cullen Trust for Health Care, says in a news release. “We cannot wait to see what new beginnings will come from inside the Lillie and Roy Cullen Tower.”

The Baylor campus is next to Texas Medical Center’s Helix Park, a 37-acre project. Rendering courtesy of BCM

The Lillie and Roy Cullen Tower is set to open in 2026. The 503,000-square-foot tower is the first phase of Baylor’s planned Health Sciences Park, an 800,000-square-foot project that will feature medical education and research adjacent to patient care at Baylor Medicine and Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center on the McNair Campus.

The Baylor campus is next to Texas Medical Center’s Helix Park, a 37-acre project that will support healthcare, life sciences, and business ventures. Baylor is the anchor tenant in the first building being constructed at Helix Park.

“To really change the future of health, we need a space that facilitates the future,” says Dr. Paul Klotman, president, CEO, and executive dean of Baylor. “We need to have a great building to recruit great talent. Having a place where our clinical programs are located, where our data scientists are, next to a biotech development center, and having our medical students all integrated into that environment will allow them to be ready in the future for where healthcare is going.”

In the 1940s, Lillie and Roy Cullen and the M.D. Anderson Foundation were instrumental in establishing the Texas Medical Center, which is now the world’s largest medical complex.

“Baylor is the place it is today because of philanthropy,” Klotman says. “The Cullen family, the M.D. Anderson Foundation, and the Albert and Margaret Alkek Foundation have been some of Baylor’s most devoted champions, which has enabled Baylor to mold generations of exceptional health sciences professionals. It is fitting that history is repeating itself with support for this state-of-the-art education building.”

The Cullen Foundation donated $30 million to the project. Rendering courtesy of BCM

Trending News