Valkim Technologies

Valkim Technologies LLC is a robotics company founded in 2020 and headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. Founded by industry veteran Kimberley Hayes, who brings over 25 years of leadership experience in business development for Fortune 500 companies, Valkim focuses on developing advanced robotic inspection solutions for hazardous and confined spaces in the energy, petroleum, and defense industries. The company's primary product, the PneuBot, is a patented, non-electric, pneumatically powered crawling robot designed to operate in environments that are unsafe for human entry and incompatible with conventional electric or battery-powered robots.

The PneuBot is certified to IECEx and ATEX Zone 0 standards, the most stringent international classifications for explosive atmosphere safety, making it capable of operating inside storage tanks containing flammable vapor atmospheres where conventional electronic equipment poses an ignition risk. Because the PneuBot is fully pneumatic and carries no electrical components, it eliminates ignition hazards entirely and can perform contact-based inspections without shutting down tank operations or requiring personnel to breach manholes. The system is modular, with color-coded quick-connect fittings that simplify assembly and make it accessible to operators without prior robotics experience.

Through a partnership with Versatile Technologies, the PneuBot can be equipped with payloads for ultrasonic thickness measurement, visual inspection, and gas detection. This capability directly addresses a longstanding gap in industrial inspection: the ability to measure wall thickness using contact-based ultrasonics inside flammable vapor atmospheres, a task that drones cannot perform. The PneuBot has received SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) funding support and has been validated by customers including Chevron.

Valkim maintains an additional office presence in the Netherlands to serve European customers operating under ATEX regulatory frameworks.