By: Natalie Johnson
There is a version of industrial automation that ends at deployment. A system is specified, engineered, installed, and handed over, and the relationship between the automation provider and the facility operator concludes more or less at that point. For the majority of automation projects in straightforward environments, that model is serviceable enough. For the environments where Automated Industrial Robotics (AIR) operates, it is not adequate.
AIR was founded in 2023 by Brian Klos, Executive Chairman, and Darragh de Stonndún, CEO, with a deliberate focus on manufacturing environments where the requirements are demanding and the margin for system underperformance is negligible. Pharmaceutical production lines, precision assembly operations, and complex integration projects all require a level of sustained engineering engagement that goes considerably beyond what the standard automation delivery model provides. AIR was built around that reality rather than around the easier version of the problem.
The company is supported by long-term strategic investment enabling continued growth and has expanded through a combination of internal development and acquisitions. The selection process for acquisitions begins not with financial or technical evaluation but with a genuine assessment of how the people in a prospective organization actually work. Whether they default to collaboration or to individual competition. Whether they treat shared outcomes as a real goal or as a talking point. Whether their approach to customer relationships reflects long-term commitment or transactional efficiency. AIR selects partners that share its commitment to collaboration, customer outcomes, and long-term thinking. That selectivity is intentional, and it shapes the character of the platform that has resulted.
That discipline has produced an organization with a distinct quality of cohesion. AIR has integrated multiple companies while maintaining strong team continuity, and the accumulated expertise across those teams is actively shared rather than siloed. Brian Klos has emphasized that the engineering knowledge residing in the people AIR has brought together is the foundation on which everything else the company offers is built. The collaborative engineering approach that AIR has developed is both how the company delivers for customers and how it sustains the internal knowledge base that makes that delivery possible.
Darragh de Stonndún has built AIR around a view that the people doing the engineering work should have a genuine stake in the outcomes they help create. AIR emphasizes sharing value creation across its teams, connecting individual contributions to collective results in a way that shapes how the organization retains talent through the competitive cycles that thin out companies built differently.
The systems AIR deploys are designed to improve accuracy over time, and the company provides ongoing support and optimization services that treat the post-commissioning period as an active phase of the engagement rather than an afterthought. For customers operating in environments where production consistency is a baseline requirement, sustained involvement is among the most consequential things AIR brings to the relationship.
AIR focuses on the value delivered to customers while maintaining strict confidentiality around who it works with and how projects are executed.
