Planted, a company developing robotic systems and software to accelerate solar power deployment, has raised $31.8 million in new funding to expand its autonomous construction fleet and launch Sage, its next-generation field robot. The round was co-led by Piva Capital and RA Capital Management Planetary Health, with participation from Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Gigascale Capital, Google and Khosla Ventures.
Planted is developing a more automated approach to building power infrastructure as electricity demand rises and developers contend with constraints involving land, labor, supply chains and lengthy project timelines.
The company’s system combines project planning software, high-density terrain-following solar arrays, energy storage and field robotics. Planted’s goal is to turn solar construction from a bespoke project-development process into a repeatable manufacturing-style deployment model.
Its technology allows solar arrays to be installed on land with slopes of up to 27% without grading, opening parcels that can be difficult to develop with conventional tracker systems. Planted said its design can also generate twice the energy per acre, reducing the land footprint required for projects.
The company recently completed a 28 MW behind-the-meter project serving a neocloud data center. The project went from the initial customer conversation to delivering power in approximately 10 months, with field construction completed in less than three months.
Planted has also completed Bowes Solar, an 11 MW Illinois project for Cultivate Power, and plans to build Aligned Climate Capital’s Armoracia project.
For Armoracia, Planted redesigned the project to fit on 16 acres, approximately 10 acres less than the original design required. The smaller footprint helped the project advance through local review after an earlier layout was rejected.
Planted deployed more than 10 MW in 2025 and expects to reach 100 MW during 2026, representing approximately 10-fold annual growth. Its project pipeline now exceeds 20 GW.
The new capital will primarily expand the company’s robotic deployment capacity and support the introduction of Sage, which is expected to enter field operations in late 2026.
According to Planted, Sage will more than double field productivity compared with its current robotic fleet. The company ultimately aims to increase field crew output by 10 times, allowing power projects to reach operation more quickly while reducing their dependence on skilled construction labor.
Planted treats each robot as another unit of production capacity. Rather than scaling primarily by assembling larger construction workforces, the company can increase deployment capacity by manufacturing and putting additional robots into service.
Its existing robotic fleet is already fully committed through 2027. Each additional Sage robot will add capacity, which Planted plans to allocate to customers based on the order in which deposits are received. Reservations for 2028 projects are now open, while early commitments may gain access to newly added 2027 capacity.
The company is targeting developers, independent power producers, data center operators and other large energy users that need additional electricity on fixed timelines.
That opportunity has become particularly important for data centers as AI infrastructure drives higher electricity consumption and grid interconnection delays make it difficult to secure new capacity quickly.
Beginning in 2027, Planted also plans to offer what it calls “powered land,” providing sites that come with clean generation and compact project footprints. The model is intended to give large energy users access to dedicated power without creating additional competition for constrained grid capacity.
Planted is hiring across robotics, hardware, commercial operations and field operations at its Oakland headquarters and project locations nationwide.
The company’s longer-term objective is to reach terawatt-scale power deployment using a repeatable infrastructure system supported by an expanding fleet of increasingly productive construction robots.
KEY QUOTES:
“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. 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.”
Eric Brown, CEO of Planted
“Electricity demand is skyrocketing today, while new power generation often takes many years to come online. 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.”
Ricardo Angel, Managing Partner at Piva Capital
“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. Planted’s model is the engine this industry needs, and it’s already proven in the field.”
Mike Schroepfer, Founding Partner at Gigascale Capital
