Gritt lands $32M to speed solar builds with retrofit robots

Gritt has emerged from stealth with just over $32 million in combined pre-seed and Series A funding, betting that robotic add-ons for existing construction equipment can accelerate solar farm construction without forcing contractors to buy new machines.

The San Francisco-based startup says its systems mount robotic arms onto standard skid steers and forklifts to pick, transport, and position solar panels with millimeter precision. Rather than replacing equipment already on site, Gritt is pitching a retrofit approach aimed at faster deployment and lower cost.

According to the company, a typical eight-person crew installs around 800 panels per day. With Gritt’s system, that same crew can place 3,000 to 4,000 panels daily. The startup also says its machines have placed tens of thousands of panels with zero breakages, though that claim has not been independently verified.

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The new funding includes a $26 million Series A led by Obvious Ventures, with Union Square Ventures and Active Impact Investments also participating. Earlier backing came from First Round Capital, Climactic, Congruent Ventures, and VSC Ventures.

Gritt says it is already contracted to help install nearly 3 gigawatts of solar capacity over the next 18 months, and counts three of the top 10 US power construction companies among its customers. But there is still a big gap between demand and deployment: only two systems are currently in the field, and the company plans to scale that to 48 within six months.

The timing reflects a labor crunch across construction. More than 41 percent of the US construction workforce is expected to retire by 2031, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, while the industry continues to struggle to attract younger workers.

Gritt’s expansion beyond solar panel placement

Gritt was founded by Puneet Puri and Vishal Dugar, both graduates of Carnegie Mellon’s robotics programme. The founders told TechCrunch that the system is designed to learn from each deployment: tasks that once took weeks to train now take days using the same underlying pipeline. They said a rebar-tying demo required only a single day of training after the company’s initial solar panel work.

The startup plans to expand into drilling posts, tying rebar, and assembling mounting racks. It enters a growing field that includes Luminous Robotics, Cosmic, and China’s Trinabot, which build dedicated panel-installation hardware rather than adding robotics to off-the-shelf machines.

Gritt’s case is straightforward: attaching AI to equipment customers already own should scale faster and more cheaply. The next test is whether that model still holds as the company moves from two deployed systems to 48 while trying to turn a promising demo into a real construction business.