Pave Robotics
"Robots that repair roads"
Y Combinator-backed San Francisco start-up building autonomous asphalt crack-sealing robots for highways, municipalities and parking lots.
Pave Robotics is a San Francisco start-up that builds autonomous robots for asphalt crack sealing, a routine pavement-preservation task that is normally carried out by multi-person road crews with hand-operated sealing equipment. The company was founded in 2024 and took part in Y Combinator's Winter 2025 batch; its website states that it is backed by Y Combinator, and Y Combinator lists a team of three and an active status.
The founders are CEO Josh Kelly and CPO Mason Landon Smith. Kelly is a Stanford graduate with mechatronics experience at Zipline and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and previously led the engineering team behind YouTuber Mark Rober's channel. Smith is a Rhode Island School of Design graduate and was a founding product designer at Crunch Labs.
The official website describes autonomous asphalt crack-sealing robots for highways, municipalities and parking lots that are faster, safer and a fraction of the lifecycle cost of conventional crack sealing. In its February 2025 Y Combinator launch post the company introduced Tracer, which it called the world's first fully autonomous crack-sealing robot, and said the machine can work around the clock and outperform a six-person crew. Sealing cracks keeps surface water out of the pavement structure and is a standard way to extend the life of an asphalt surface before more costly resurfacing or pothole repair becomes necessary, which is why road owners schedule it as preventive maintenance.
The company frames the opportunity around the condition of US roads: according to its launch post, about 42% of US roads are in mediocre or poor condition despite roughly US$27 billion spent each year on maintenance. Target customers named by the company include paving contractors, state and local departments of transportation, public works departments, private equity firms that acquire paving companies, and large private owners of parking lots and roads. Pave Robotics has said it intends to expand from crack sealing into other road maintenance and paving tasks once the first product is established with customers. No product specifications, customer names or funding amounts beyond the Y Combinator backing have been published on the official website.
Primary type & automation activities this supplier delivers:
More related news
- 1
- 2
- 3
-
4
Construction Robotics Summit 2027: April 14, Brooklyn RobotToday · Oct 05, 2026
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
-
12
Suzy Teele’s Mission at ARM Institute RobotToday · Oct 13, 2026
-
13
ISARC 2027: June 26-July 1, Odense, Denmark RobotToday · Oct 06, 2026
-
14
CICEE 2027: May 12-15, Changsha, China RobotToday · Oct 05, 2026
-
15
NASA Lunabotics Challenge 2027, KSC, May 24-27 RobotToday · Oct 05, 2026
Contact Pave Robotics
WEBSITE
https://pave-robotics.comHEADQUARTERS
United States
Company Facts
Founded
2024
Primary Role
Manufacturer
Company Size
-
Primary Region
North America
Annual Sales
-
Funding Stage
Early-Stage VC
Funding Total
-
