Seed · $5M
Pave Robotics
Autonomous robots that seal asphalt cracks — fixing roads 24/7
RoboticsInfrastructureY Combinator
pave-robotics.com →
Fixing America's Roads, One Crack at a Time
Approximately 42% of US roads are in mediocre or poor condition — yet the country spends $27 billion annually on road maintenance. The gap between spending and outcomes comes down to a fundamental constraint: crack sealing, the most cost-effective form of preventative road maintenance, still relies almost entirely on manual labor-intensive crews. Pave Robotics is changing that.
Founded by Josh Kelly and Mason Landon Smith and backed by Y Combinator's W25 batch, Pave Robotics is building the world's first fully autonomous asphalt crack-sealing robot. The company raised a $5 million seed round in April 2025 to accelerate development and deployment of its flagship product, Tracer.
What They're Building
Tracer is a fully autonomous robot designed to detect, clean, and seal asphalt cracks with sub-millimeter precision — entirely without human supervision. Operating around the clock, Tracer can match the output of a six-person crew, radically reducing labor costs while improving consistency and throughput. The robot handles the complete workflow: it scans road surfaces to identify cracks, cleans them to ensure proper adhesion, then precisely applies sealant along the crack path.
The ability to operate 24/7 is a meaningful unlock for road maintenance departments and contractors. Crews are constrained by shift hours, weather windows, and safety logistics; Tracer is not. A single robot deployed overnight can complete work that would otherwise require full-day crew mobilization, with no fatigue and consistent quality across every linear foot.
Why It Matters
Crack sealing is the cheapest and most effective intervention in the road maintenance lifecycle — sealing a crack early prevents water infiltration that leads to potholes, base erosion, and eventually full road reconstruction at orders-of-magnitude higher cost. Yet because it is labor-intensive and low-margin, it is chronically underperformed. Pave Robotics removes the labor constraint entirely, making it economically practical to seal roads far more aggressively and on schedule. With $5 million in seed funding from Contrarian Thinking Capital, FundersClub, Multimodal Ventures, Pioneer Fund, and Spacecadet Ventures, the company is positioned to deploy Tracer at scale and tackle one of the most underfunded infrastructure problems in the United States.
About Josh Kelly & Mason Landon Smith
Josh Kelly is the CEO and co-founder of Pave Robotics. He studied Mechanical Engineering with a focus on Mechatronics at Stanford University, where he developed the robotics and systems expertise that underpins Tracer's core technology. Before founding Pave Robotics, Kelly served as Head of Engineering for Mark Rober — the YouTuber behind viral engineering projects including glitterbombs and the world's largest domino robot — where he led the technical execution of complex, precision-driven mechanical systems at scale. He also held roles at Zipline, the autonomous delivery drone company, and NASA JPL, where he worked on spacecraft and robotic systems. In 2026, Kelly was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.
Mason Landon Smith is the CPO and co-founder of Pave Robotics. He holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and brings a rare combination of industrial design sensibility and product intuition to a hardware robotics company. Smith previously served as a Founding Product Designer at CrunchLabs, the subscription science kit company founded by Mark Rober, where he helped define the product experience from the ground up. Like Kelly, Smith was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2026. Together, they represent an unusual pairing of deep mechanical engineering expertise and human-centered product design — a combination well-suited to building robots that must perform reliably in uncontrolled outdoor environments while remaining accessible to municipal and contractor customers.
The two founders went through Y Combinator's W25 batch, where they sharpened Pave Robotics' go-to-market strategy and assembled a seed investor base that includes Contrarian Thinking Capital, FundersClub, Multimodal Ventures, Pioneer Fund, and Spacecadet Ventures. Their shared background connecting through Mark Rober's creative engineering ecosystem gave them a distinctive starting point: experience shipping mechanically complex products to demanding audiences on tight timelines.
Stanford
Josh Kelly's Engineering Degree
RISD
Mason Smith's Design Degree
Forbes 30U30
Both Founders (2026)
Sources: Public press releases, SEC and state business filings, published interviews, news coverage, and company disclosures.
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