Founded by Carnegie Mellon-trained roboticists Puneet Puri and Vishal Dugar, Gritt is developing an AI control system that connects robotic arms and sensors to existing jobsite equipment, including skid steers and forklifts. That approach avoids designing an entire vehicle from scratch and lets contractors retain machinery their crews already know how to operate and maintain.
Automating part of the installation process
Gritt’s current solar workflow unloads panels, transports them and positions them on mounting structures. Human workers still fasten the panels in place. The distinction matters: the company is automating a physically demanding section of solar construction, not offering a machine that independently builds an entire solar farm.
According to Gritt, a typical eight-person crew installs about 800 panels per day, while the same crew working with its system can place between 3,000 and 4,000. The company also says its machines have positioned tens of thousands of panels without breakage. These performance figures have not been independently validated through published testing.
TechCrunch reported that two Gritt systems were operating in the field at the time of the announcement. Gritt said it had contracts covering 2.8 gigawatts of solar capacity over the following 18 months, including work for three of the ten largest US power-construction companies, although those customers were not named. It planned to expand to 48 systems within six months.
That expansion is the more revealing test. Two machines can receive close attention from engineers. A fleet must keep working through dust, heat, cold, uneven terrain, changing materials and construction schedules that cannot pause whenever a robot encounters an unfamiliar arrangement.
From demonstration to dependable equipment
Gritt says its software learns from deployments and can be adapted to additional construction tasks. The company is working beyond solar-panel placement towards assembly, component transport, verification and planning, with data centres and large infrastructure listed as future markets. It has also demonstrated work involving concrete and rebar.
The commercial details are less developed publicly. Gritt does not publish a purchase price, rental rate or standard deployment package. Its website invites contractors to discuss bringing the system to a jobsite, making it closer to a directly contracted deployment than a robot available for ordinary catalogue purchase.
What robot buyers should watch
For buyers evaluating construction robots, the useful questions begin after the demonstration:
- Which panel and tracker combinations are supported?
- How many operators and how much supervision remain necessary?
- Can the reported output be repeated across different weather, terrain and site layouts?
- Who maintains the equipment, supplies parts and responds during downtime?
- Is the system sold, rented or provided as a managed service, and what is included?
The complete operating package matters more than the price of the arm alone. Integration, attachments, transport, training, supervision, spare parts and service coverage can determine whether a technically capable system produces an economic advantage. Anton Robots’ robotic arm price guide explains why hardware is only one part of deployment cost.
Why the Gritt model matters
Gritt enters a field that includes specialist solar-installation companies such as Luminous Robotics, Cosmic Robotics and Trinabot. Its wager is that combining software with proven vehicles and off-the-shelf arms will make it faster and less capital-intensive to deploy than purpose-built machinery.
There is a sensible engineering argument underneath the funding announcement. Solar projects are large, often remote and filled with repeated lifting tasks. Gritt has shown its machines performing useful work on active sites and has secured a substantial contracted pipeline. It has not yet shown that reliability, support and economics will hold across dozens of systems.
For businesses considering automation in construction, energy or other outdoor environments, Anton Robots’ Find My Robot service can help define the task, operating conditions, budget and supplier requirements before comparing available systems.