Solar energy is booming worldwide, but there is one big bottleneck nobody likes to talk about: finding enough workers to install all those panels. A Pittsburgh-based robotics startup called Gritt thinks it has cracked the code, and it just walked out of stealth with $32 million in funding to prove it.
The company, founded by Carnegie Mellon-trained roboticists Puneet Puri and Vishal Dugar, builds AI-controlled systems that can unload heavy glass solar panels, carry them across muddy construction sites, and place them on metal frames with sub-millimeter accuracy. The result? A typical eight-person crew that normally installs about 800 panels per day can handle 3,000 to 4,000 panels with Gritt's help. That is a 4x to 5x jump in productivity.
"Solar installation is still extremely manual," Puri told TechCrunch. "Workers are lifting 100-pound panels over their heads on uneven ground, in the heat. It is dangerous, exhausting work, and we just do not have enough people who want to do it. The industry is desperate for a different way."
How Gritt's Robots Actually Work
Gritt does not build its own custom robots from scratch. Instead, the company takes off-the-shelf hardware — skid-steer loaders and robotic arms from companies like Kawasaki — and layers its own AI software on top. That approach lets Gritt focus on the intelligence side while leaving the heavy lifting to proven industrial equipment.
Rather than reinventing the wheel, the startup picked up existing machinery and taught it to see, think, and act on its own. Each Gritt system carries a suite of cameras and sensors that feed data into the company's machine-learning models. Those models understand the layout of a construction site, recognize individual panels by their position, and plan the safest, fastest path from the delivery truck to the mounting frame.
The startup currently has two systems deployed in the field, and it says those machines are collecting real-world data every day to get smarter. Training a system to stack cinder blocks took weeks, according to Puri. But when the team tried a similar manipulation task — tying rebar — it took just one day using the same underlying AI pipeline. That kind of rapid skill transfer is exactly what makes the company's approach different from traditional industrial automation, where every new task requires months of reprogramming.
Gritt is contracted to help install 2.8 gigawatts of solar capacity over the next 18 months. That is enough to power roughly 500,000 U.S. homes. Its customers include three of the top ten power construction companies in the country.
The $32 Million Bet on Construction Robotics
Gritt's Series A round was led by Obvious Ventures, with participation from Union Square Ventures and Active Impact Investment. The company had previously raised a seed round backed by First Round Capital, Climactic, Congruent Ventures, and VSC Ventures.
Andrew Beebe, the Obvious Ventures partner who led the round, said Gritt's founders stood out because they focused on practical, real-world problems rather than flashy demos. "There are people who used to build rockets that went into space and had infinite budget for the smallest little part," he said. "And then there are people who know what it means to get into dirty, dull, and dangerous jobs and scale them like mad. These guys are in the second camp."
The investment comes at a time when demand for solar installations is climbing fast. The U.S. Energy Information Administration expects solar to account for 60% of new U.S. electricity generation capacity in 2026. But the solar workforce grew only 6% last year, according to the Interstate Renewable Energy Council — not nearly fast enough to keep pace with the build-out targets that utilities and developers have set.
Gritt faces competition from other construction robotics startups like Luminous Robotics, Cosmic Robotics, and China's Trinabot. Most of those companies build their own custom hardware rather than retrofitting off-the-shelf machines. Puri argues that Gritt's approach gives it a cost and flexibility edge, since its systems can be deployed faster and upgraded independently of the hardware underneath.
TechCrunch spoke to one Gritt customer who declined to be identified for competitive reasons, but who was enthusiastic about the system's ability to improve his work. He expects it to be easier to staff remote sites where it is difficult to attract workers, and anticipates a reduction in injuries since workers will not have to repeatedly lift 100-pound panels overhead eight hours a day.
Beyond Solar: What Comes Next
Gritt has bigger ambitions than just solar panels. The company plans to expand into other heavy construction tasks that involve repetitive physical labor in unstructured environments. Top of the list: fastening panels, drilling posts, building the metal racks that support solar arrays, and tying rebar before concrete is poured. Each of those tasks is currently done by hand, often in uncomfortable positions and in extreme heat or cold.
"This is not a solar company — it is a physical AI company," Puri said. "Solar is our beachhead, but the underlying technology can be applied across construction, logistics, and manufacturing. We picked solar first because it is big, fast-growing, and the work is physically punishing. But the same approach works anywhere you have repetitive outdoor material handling."
The long-term vision goes beyond just installing things. Puri described a scenario where Gritt's system notices an open trench while a storm approaches and alerts workers to cover it before rain floods the site. Another idea: using the sensor data to flag missing inventory or detect quality issues in real time. The machines, in other words, become an intelligent layer over the entire construction site.
"Construction is one of the last industries to get a real productivity boost from software and automation," said Beebe. "Gritt is bringing AI and robotics to a sector that is genuinely hungry for it. The guys swinging hammers on site are not skeptical — they are relieved that someone is finally building tools to make their jobs safer."
The company plans to scale from two deployed systems to 48 within the next six months, driven by customer demand and the solar installation contracts it has already signed. If Gritt hits that target, it will represent one of the largest real-world deployments of autonomous construction robots anywhere in the world. And it suggests that the construction industry, long considered resistant to automation, may finally be ready for a change.
For a deeper look at how robotics is reshaping other sectors, check out our Robotics and Drones coverage. The original TechCrunch article on Gritt's funding round is available here.
The solar build-out is not going to slow down anytime soon. And if Gritt's numbers hold up, the robots doing the heavy lifting might just be getting started.