How Brian Klos and Darragh de Stonndún Built Automated Industrial Robotics (AIR) Into an Engineering-Led Approach to American Manufacturing

When Brian Klos and Darragh de Stonndún founded Automated Industrial Robotics in 2023, the automation sector was not lacking for companies. They saw an opportunity for companies to take a more unified approach to developing automation systems for long-term use in demanding environments. Their response helped shape AIR’s subsequent development.

The company operates in pharmaceutical production, precision assembly, and complex systems integration, sectors where the requirements for accuracy and consistency are unforgiving and where the relationship between an automation provider and a facility operator needs to be sustained and genuinely collaborative rather than transactional. Klos, who serves as Executive Chairman with oversight of long-term strategy and capitalization, and de Stonndun, who leads the company as CEO, built AIR with both of those realities in mind from the beginning.

The acquisition model AIR has developed reflects that founding orientation. Growth through acquisitions has become a common strategy in the automation sector, but the outcomes vary considerably depending on what criteria drive the selection process. AIR begins every evaluation with a cultural assessment. Before any technical or financial review takes place, the company asks whether the people running a prospective business share the values that AIR’s model depends on: a genuine collaborative approach to engineering problems, real collective accountability for outcomes, and a customer relationship philosophy grounded in long-term performance rather than project delivery. Companies that meet those criteria are integrated into the network. According to AIR, it has integrated multiple companies while retaining continuity across its teams, which reflects both the discipline of the selection process and the strength of the organization those people are joining.

The company says the engineering knowledge developed through this approach is shared across the organization rather than a collection of individual or business-unit capabilities. Expertise developed in pharmaceutical automation is applied to precision assembly challenges. Experience accumulated in complex integration work informs how the company approaches adjacent problems. Darragh de Stonndun has been consistent about how central this is to what AIR offers: customers engage the company and gain access to the full breadth of its collective engineering experience, not only the knowledge of the team physically closest to their facility.

AIR emphasizes sharing value creation across its teams, a principle that connects the people doing the engineering work to the outcomes they help produce. In a sector where experienced technical talent has genuine options and where the quality of engineering work depends substantially on the engagement of the people performing it, that principle can affect operations. AIR says its employee retention reflects its emphasis on engineers and technicians within its operating model rather than the delivery mechanism for a technology product.

The company’s systems are designed to support adjustments in accuracy over time. According to the company, AIR offers an engineering-led deployment approach, along with support and optimization services throughout the customer relationship, reflecting a view that the most consequential phase of an automation engagement is often not the installation but everything that follows it.

AIR focuses on the value delivered to customers while maintaining strict confidentiality around who it works with and how projects are executed.