Global solar deployment is hitting a labour wall. Companies and nations are rushing to install panels and batteries to secure energy independence and curb climate change, yet a shortage of workers threatens to stall progress. Industrial robots have historically failed in these unstructured settings, but a new generation of AI models may have altered that equation.
Gritt is a start-up founded by two Carnegie Mellon-trained roboticists, CEO Puneet Puri and CTO Vishal Dugar. The company exited stealth Tuesday morning with a $26 million Series A round led by Obvious Ventures, with participation from Union Square Ventures and Active Impact Investment. Total funding now stands at $34 million, following a seed round backed by First Round Capital, Climactic, Congruent Ventures, and VSC Ventures. The startup is building an intelligent system to “help civilization build infrastructure faster,” according to Puri.
“Our thesis is that if we truly want to speed up construction,” Puri tells TechCrunch, “you need an intelligence which can work in the outdoor, chaotic environments of these construction sites, and it has to be generalizable enough that it can work in these varied environments.”
Gritt does not build its own robots from scratch. Instead, it uses off-the-shelf hardware—currently rented skidders and robotic arms from companies like Kawasaki—to construct platforms controlled by its AI models. The initial task involves unloading large, glass solar panels, carrying them to metal frames, and positioning them with sub-millimeter accuracy so workers can fasten them.
“There are people who used to build rockets that went into space and had infinite budget for the smallest little part, and then there are people who know what it means to get into dirty, dull, and dangerous jobs and scale them like mad,” said Andrew Beebe, the partner at Obvious Ventures who led Gritt’s Series A round. “These guys are in the second camp, and that’s a special kind of entrepreneur that has the technical chops, the AI, and the machine vision skills to make it work.”
Two Gritt systems are currently deployed in the field, using collected data to refine their behaviour. Puri notes that a typical eight-person crew installs 800 panels a day. With Gritt’s systems, the same crew can install 3,000 to 4,000 panels each day.
The company states it is contracted to help install 2.8 gigawatts of solar panels over the next 18 months. Customers include three of the top 10 US power construction firms. Gritt hopes to operate 48 of its systems within the next six months.
TechCrunch spoke to one Gritt customer who declined to be named for competitive reasons. He is enthusiastic about the system’s ability to improve his work. He expects it to be easier to operate at remote sites where attracting workers is difficult. He anticipates a reduction in injuries because workers will not need to repeatedly lift 100-pound panels overhead.
Gritt competes against companies like Luminous Robotics, Cosmic, and China’s Trinabot, which build their own panel-installing robots. Those rivals focus on custom hardware rather than off-the-shelf vehicles and arms like Gritt. This difference could determine who grows faster and maintains a leaner cost structure as demand rises.
Gritt plans to add new manipulation tasks to its system. It aims to fasten solar panels, drill posts, and even build the racks they sit on. Longer term, the company intends to move into other common, labour-intensive construction tasks, such as tying rebar before concrete is poured.
The rise of new AI models has enabled this vision, the founders say.
“Making a system for one solution was still possible to some extent five years ago, right?” Puri said. “AI is now making that work generalizable — the same underlying pipeline can be reused and improve across tasks.” As an example, he noted that training the system to stack cinder blocks took weeks, while a similar demo with rebar tying took just a day using the same software.
Training new tasks is only the beginning of Gritt’s vision. The founders believe the suite of sensors and intelligence their systems bring to worksites can do more than install panels; it can boost management and decision-making. For instance, they imagine their system noticing a trench is open while a storm approaches, allowing it to alert workers to cover it before rain damages components, or flagging missing inventory.
“Gritt becomes now this layer of physical AI, which is doing this dextrous, labor-intensive task, plus it can help you take decisions on the site,” Puri said.
What it means
The immediate impact for construction crews is a reduction in heavy lifting and physical strain. Workers handling 100-pound panels will see fewer injuries. The technology also addresses the chronic shortage of labour in remote areas, allowing projects to proceed without waiting for scarce human hands.
