Planted Solar expanding robotic project deployment fleet with new funding
Oakland, California-based robotics and software firm Planted Solar and a fleet of investment partners have raised $31.8 million in a bid to scale autonomous power deployment technology.
Co-led by Piva Capital and RA Capital Management Planetary Health, the newly completed funding round aims to bring Planted’s technologies to a U.S. energy market in dire need. The company says power demand is spiking much faster than humans can possibly build it, with the world’s multi-terawatt needs far outpacing the 664 GW of solar installed globally last year.
If humans can’t build these solar sites fast enough, Planted officials posit that the obvious solution is autonomous robotic solar deployments.
“Globally, solar needs to be deployed about five times faster than it is today to hit the scale experts project we’ll need by 2050, and the gap is growing as the industry confronts constraints involving supply chains, land, interconnection, and skilled labor,” says Planted CEO Eric Brown.
“The way to close that gap is to turn the construction of a power plant into a manufacturing problem: building robots and deployment systems, not just projects. We have robots in the field proving the model works today. This round is how we scale it.”
The funding will expand Planted’s existing robotic fleet, as it continues to serve developers, independent power producers, and data center operators, among other buyers. The company also has plans to provide “powered land” as early as 2027, promising sites that arrive with their own renewable energy plants and compact footprints, with no additional strain on ratepayers.
Projects to products
This overall approach — turning solar projects into products — has proven to be financially viable, Planted representatives claim. The company completed the 11 MW Bowes Solar in 2025, and currently has plans to build Aligned Climate Capital’s Armoracia project in the near future.
In total, the Bay Area robotics developer is on track for more than 100 MW worth of project installations in 2026, jumping a full order of magnitude up from last year. In total, the company estimates its project pipeline currently reaches more than 20 GW.
“Electricity demand is skyrocketing today, while new power generation often takes many years to come online,” says Ricardo Angel, managing partner of Piva Capital. “By combining intelligent planning and project development software, high-density racking, and autonomous field robotics, Planted dramatically reduces the land, steel, and labor bottlenecks slowing projects down.
“The company has developed a much faster and more capital-efficient way to deliver power when industrial energy buyers like data centers need it most.”
Each of the new solar arrays is simplified and designed for automation, so the company’s deployment robots can deliver new projects in months, rather than years. The firm’s most recent project, a 28 MW site serving an AI cloud storage data center, went from initial calls to energization in just ten months.
Developing Planted’s next generation
In addition to funding Planted’s existing network of deployment automatons, the $31.8 million raised will support the launch of the company’s newest product. Known as Sage, the next-generation installation robot will enter solar fields in 2026, and has more than double the field productivity level when compared to the firm’s current fleet.
Company officials and investors say Sage is “a major step” toward Planted Solar’s wider goals in the energy space. As of September 2026, the Californian firm needs to realize a tenfold gain in field crew output, as well as faster time to power.
Planted’s existing fleet is already fully committed through to 2027, with each Sage unit off the line adding more capacity.
“When industries go from bespoke to manufactured, they unlock orders of magnitude more scale at a fraction of the cost. Solar construction is still building custom projects, site by site,” says Mike Schroepfer, founding partner at Gigascale Capital. “Planted’s model is the engine this industry needs, and it’s already proven in the field.”
Deployment robot reservations for 2028 are open now, Planted Solar officials say. Additionally, customers who commit early will be first in line for 2027 capacity as new units reach completion.
