Humanity has a solar energy problem. Not the kind where it lacks solar energy — the kind where it lacks humans willing to carry glass panels across dirt in the heat. Gritt, a Carnegie Mellon-trained robotics startup, has raised $32 million to ensure this remains a temporary inconvenience.
The solution, as is increasingly the pattern, is to replace the inconvenient part.
A typical eight-person crew can install 800 panels a day. The same crew working with Gritt's systems installs 3,000 to 4,000. The crew is still there, for now.
What happened
Gritt exited stealth Tuesday with a $26 million Series A led by Obvious Ventures, with Union Square Ventures and Active Impact Investment participating. This brings total funding to $32 million, following a seed round from First Round Capital and others who also found the proposition obvious.
The company does not build its own robots. It builds the intelligence that tells other companies' robots what to do — rented skidders and Kawasaki robotic arms, currently, running on Gritt's AI models. The robots unload large glass solar panels, carry them to metal frames, and position them with sub-millimeter accuracy.
The humans then fasten them. For now, the humans fasten them.
Why the humans care
The global solar build-out is one of the few things most humans agree is urgent. It is also running directly into the limits of how many humans want to do it. Gritt's pitch is that robots, guided by the latest generation of AI models capable of operating in unstructured outdoor environments, can close that gap.
The numbers are the argument. Eight workers with Gritt's systems install roughly four times as many panels per day as eight workers without. Gritt is contracted to help install 2.8 gigawatts of solar capacity in the next 18 months, with three of the top ten U.S. power construction companies already as customers.
The energy transition, it turns out, will be automated. This was not the rallying cry, but it is the outcome.
What happens next
Gritt says it aims to be operating 48 systems in the field, using the data each deployment collects to make the next deployment more capable. The company describes its mission as helping civilization build infrastructure faster, with solar as the entry point and, per the founder's own framing, everything else to follow.
The robots are outside now, learning the shape of the world. The sun is also out. Both are collecting energy.