Planted Raises $31.8 Million to Accelerate Autonomous Solar Deployment

Planted Raises $31.8 Million to Accelerate Autonomous Solar Deployment

Tue, September 15, 2026 at 5:36 PM GMT+3 3 min read

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A company that specializes in autonomous power deployment said it has raised $31.8 million to scale its operations. California-based Planted said the new capital expands its robotic fleet. The company said the funding also supports the launch of Sage, its next-generation robot, as demand outpaces the company's current capacity.Planted on September 15 said the funding round was led by Piva Capital and RA Capital Management Planetary Health, with participation from Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Gigascale Capital, Google, and Khosla Ventures."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," said Eric Brown, CEO of Planted. "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."

Record Solar Installations

Brown's group on Tuesday said a record 664 GW of solar photovoltaic power was installed worldwide last year, but noted terawatts of new generation capacity are needed to meet projected demand. The company said it combines planning software, high-density terrain-following solar arrays, storage, and field robotics into one system, which enables Planted to build on parcels of land that legacy trackers cannot use. The company said its system also delivers twice the energy per acre, resulting in smaller project footprints and a lower profile on the landscape.Planted said its array "is simplified, designed for automation, and defined in software," and thus can deliver new power generation capacity in months rather than years. Planted's most recent build, a 28-MW behind-the-meter project serving a neocloud data center, went from first call to power in 10 months, with field construction completed in under three months.Planted on Tuesday said the company's development model "is proven and bankable," and noted its projects carry independent engineering validation and project financing. The company completed Bowes Solar, an 11-MW project in Illinois for Cultivate Power, and will next build Aligned Climate Capital's Armoracia project on 16 acres, 10 fewer than the original design required. The denser redesign moved the project through local review after the initial layout was rejected, according to the company. Planted, which deployed more than 10 MW in 2025, is on track for 100 MW in 2026, a 10x jump in a single year, with a project pipeline of more than 20 GW.The company said Sage, the next-generation robot, will be deployed later this year.

Plans for Rapid Development

"Electricity demand is skyrocketing today, while new power generation often takes many years to come online," said Ricardo Angel, managing partner at Piva Capital. "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.""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," said Mike Schroepfer, founding partner at Gigascale Capital, a group founded in 2023. Gigascale backs early-stage companies, and to date has invested in more than 25 groups. "Planted's model is the engine this industry needs, and it's already proven in the field," said Schroepfer.—Darrell Proctor is a senior editor for POWER.