PITTSBURGH, Pa. — Gecko Robotics today announced a partnership with Anduril Industries to help accelerate American shipbuilding using advanced robotics, AI-powered software, and automated quality assurance. The partnership is a direct response to America’s maritime production challenge, helping rebuild the industrial capacity required to deliver the next generation of submarines, ships, and autonomous maritime systems.

The partnership will support Anduril’s Arsenal-2, a new software-defined shipyard in Baltimore County, Maryland, announced as part of the company’s $3.7bn investment to expand production for the Virginia-class submarine program. Gecko’s technology will be deployed at Anduril’s new 160,000-square-foot protofactory in Orange County, California, where key submarine components will be manufactured.

Working with other key customers across the defense industrial base, Gecko’s technology has already reduced inspection timelines for forged components by up to 90%, significantly improving cost and schedule performance for the U.S. Navy. By embedding inspection expertise directly into software and robotics, Gecko enables workers with no prior NDT experience to become productive in as little as an hour of training, allowing manufacturers to rapidly expand qualified inspection capacity without relying solely on scarce specialist labor. As demand for submarines and other naval systems continues to rise, expanding the available workforce will be just as important as expanding production facilities.

“The challenge facing our nation isn’t a lack of engineering talent or innovation, it’s industrial capacity,” said Troy Demmer, Co-Founder and President of Gecko Robotics. “For generations, shipbuilding has been constrained by manual processes, fragmented data, production bottlenecks, and a shortage of specialized labor. Together, Gecko and Anduril are redefining what shipbuilding looks like, using AI and robotics to embed expertise directly into the manufacturing process and enable faster, more scalable production.”

Bill Noderer, Anduril’s VP & General Manager, Shipbuilding, said: “We are already embedding Gecko’s NDT technology into real production workflows at our Orange County protofactory and integrating it deeply with ArsenalOS. This will reduce inspection wait times, give our inspectors better tools to do their jobs, and establish quality processes that we can bring to the Arsenal-2 shipyard in Maryland from day one.”

The partnership reflects a broader transformation underway across the defense industrial base. As Anduril develops software-defined production systems through ArsenalOS, Gecko provides real-time intelligence and data on physical assets that are essential for military grade manufacturing operations. Every assessment of new build components contributes to a continuously evolving digital thread that follows critical components from manufacturing through decades of operational service.

That digital thread creates more than quality records. This approach  also streamlines  maintenance planning and reduces unplanned  maintenance costs and repairs, ensuring optimal performance over the lifetime of the fleet. This lack of data and insight plagues ships around the world with unexpected downtime.

From Gecko Robotics, Oct. 8, 2026