Gritt exits stealth with over 32 million dollars for robots that build solar plants

6:03 AM · July 21, 2026

Gritt, a startup founded by two Carnegie Mellon trained roboticists, chief executive Puneet Puri and chief technology officer Vishal Dugar, exited stealth with a 26 million dollar Series A round led by Obvious Ventures, with participation from Union Square Ventures and Active Impact Investment, according to TechCrunch, bringing the company's total funding to just over 32 million dollars following an earlier seed round. Rather than building its own robots from scratch, Gritt develops AI software that controls off the shelf hardware, including rented skidders and robotic arms made by companies like Kawasaki, turning generic construction equipment into an intelligent system rather than requiring customers to buy specialized robots. The company's first commercial application is unloading large, heavy glass solar panels, carrying them to the metal frames where they need to be installed, and positioning them with sub millimeter accuracy, a task that directly addresses a labor shortage in the solar industry, where demand for skilled installation crews has consistently outpaced the available workforce. Gritt's broader pitch, reflected in the company's own framing of its mission as helping civilization build infrastructure faster, extends beyond solar installation to other categories of large scale outdoor construction, positioning the current solar panel work as a first proof point for a more general approach to automating physical construction tasks using AI controlled versions of equipment the industry already owns rather than entirely new robotic hardware.