Pittsburgh startup, Gecko Robotics, has secured a five-year IDIQ contract with the US Navy and the General Services Administration, with a ceiling of $71 million. The deal is the largest contract the Navy has ever awarded and the largest robotics deal so far. Gecko's AI platform will create digital twins of Pacific Fleet vessels, starting with 18 ships in the US Pacific Fleet. The company's wall-climbing robots, drones, and sensors will crawl across hulls, decks, and welds, gathering data points that would take weeks to collect. The contract ensures that any branch of the Department of Defense can access the company’s AI and robotics, not just the Navy. This deal comes at a time when the Navy is dealing with a maintenance crisis, which costs between $13 billion and $20 billion annually.