Rodeo Robotics

Rodeo builds a robotic technician that automates maintenance so fleets can get vehicles back on the road sooner. Initial deployments focus on oil changes at centralized depots, where routine maintenance competes for scarce technician time. Cofounders Michael Hazard and Colby Duke met at Applied Intuition, where they worked with OEMs like Toyota and General Motors to bring software and autonomy to vehicles. They saw firsthand how much manual work it takes to keep vehicle fleets running, and learned how to make autonomy reliable through structured testing, real-world data, and human intervention. They’re now applying their experience to the roughly $600B annual US vehicle maintenance market. The average US vehicle is older than ever, driving up maintenance demand at a time when shops already struggle to hire and retain technicians. That gap leaves fleets facing costly downtime and preventable breakdowns. Despite this need, vehicle maintenance has resisted traditional automation. Service information is fragmented and unreliable, and vehicle hardware varies significantly between makes and models. Rodeo builds on advances in robotic foundation models to learn maintenance skills that transfer across vehicles. Rodeo pairs robots with human technicians who ensure each job is completed correctly, handling work the robots can’t yet perform autonomously. These deployments generate training data for Rodeo’s models through both teleoperation and hand tools augmented to record how technicians work. This lets Rodeo earn revenue while collecting the data needed to automate more of each job and improve margins.

YC batch

F26 · Fall 2026

Status, per YC

Active

Category

AI

Team size

2

Location

San Francisco, CA, USA

Checked

6h ago

YC tags: Hard Tech, Robotics, AI, Automotive