2024’s Startup Battlefield runner-up geCKo Materials reveals four new products at TechCrunch Disrupt

D 2024 runner-up TechCrunch on the Disruptive Startup Battlefield, geCKo materialsIt returned to the stage at this year’s show to debut new products as it pushes deeper into commercializing its technology.

Founder Dr. Capella Kirst revealed four new uses for geCKo’s super-strong dry adhesive: a semiconductor wafer handling tool, a robotic gripper for smooth surfaces (such as solar panels or glass), a curved robotic “end effector” for more irregular shapes, and an all-purpose gripper for robotic arms.

The geCKo technology is inspired by the way real-life lizards use their feet to grip surfaces. Kerst positions it as a new form of Velcro, but one that leaves no residue, can attach and detach quickly, and requires no electrical charge or suction. A one-inch tile of the material can hold 16 pounds, and geCKo dry adhesive can bond 120,000 times — and stay bonded for seconds, minutes or years.

The ability to quickly adapt dry adhesives to existing manufacturing, picking and other robotic applications has proven popular. Kerst’s company won Ford, NASA, and Pacific Gas & Electric as customers before he competed on last year’s Battlefield stage.

“Has this year gone by so fast for us or anyone else?” Kirst said on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt on Wednesday. The geCKo CEO said his company has tripled the size of its team since last year’s show and raised $8 million in funding. And geCKo’s dry adhesive has been used on six space missions in the past year — a testament to the material’s ability to work in multiple environments, including vacuum, according to Kirst.

On stage Wednesday, Kirst showed a Fanuc robotic arm using six geCKo tiles to quickly grasp and move objects around, before showing videos of other commercialized applications.

In one of those videos, Kurst demonstrated geCKo’s material being used to safely move semiconductor wafers faster than current suction or vacuum technologies allow.

“Our customers at TSMC, Samsung, Intel and Kawasaki say we have a goal [move the wafers] at 2Gs of acceleration,” he said. “We decided to blow them out of the water and repeatedly, reliably accelerate to 5.4Gs using geCKo materials.”