Planted Raises $31.8 Million to Build Solar Projects with Robots

Autonomous power deployment solutions provider Planted Solar announced that it has raised $31.8 million in a new funding round, with the proceeds aimed at scaling its platform utilizing robotics enabling developers to accelerate deployment and use less land for solar energy projects.

According to Planted, the funding comes as power demand is rising faster than new capacity can be built, with deployment emerging as a key constraint to new solar power.

Founded in 2020, California-based Planted provides an integrated software and hardware platform aimed at helping developers and independent power producers deploy solar projects faster and at lower cost. The company’s technology combines planning software, high-density terrain-following solar arrays, storage and field robotics, enabling projects to reduce land and grading requirements while enabling faster construction with smaller crews.

The company has scaled significantly over the past year, with deployment on track to hit 100 MW in 2026, jumping 10x from 10 MW in 2025, and with a project pipeline of more than 20 GW.

According to the company, the system enables solar projects to be built on land with slopes of up to 27% without grading, including parcels unsuitable for traditional solar trackers, while delivering twice the energy per acre and reducing project footprints.

The company said that its software-defined, automation-focused approach enables new power capacity to be deployed in months rather than years. The company’s most recent project, a 28 MW behind-the-meter installation serving a neocloud data center, progressed from initial discussions to power delivery in ten months, with field construction completed in less than three months.

Eric Brown, CEO of Planted, said:

“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.”

Planted said that it will use the new capital to expand Planted’s robotic fleet and support the launch of Sage, the company’s next-generation robot, which is scheduled for deployment in late 2026, and is expected to more than double field productivity compared with the company’s current fleet.

The funding round was co-led by Piva Capital and RA Capital, with participation from Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Gigascale Capital, Google and Khosla Ventures.

Ricardo Angel, Managing Partner at Piva Capital, said:

“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.”