Oakland-based Planted Solar has raised $31.8 million to accelerate what the company calls autonomous power deployment. The round is co-led by Piva Capital and RA Capital's Planetary Health unit, with Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Gigascale Capital, Google and Khosla Ventures all writing checks.
Building Solar With Robots, Skipping The Bulldozer
Founded in 2020 by CEO Eric Brown, Planted pitches an integrated stack: planning software, dense terrain-following arrays, storage, and field robotics that install panels on sloped ground without prior grading. Brown's argument is that cheap panels have already solved the module-cost problem — what's left, and what Planted is attacking, is “land, permitting, labor and construction.” The company projects a 10x jump in annual deployment, from about 10 MW in 2025 to 100 MW in 2026, with a project pipeline north of 20 GW.
Google's Meitner And A Neocloud Data Center
Named deployments include Google's Meitner Energy Center in Texas, Cultivate Power's community-solar builds in the Chicago metro, and a 28 MW behind-the-meter installation for a neocloud data center that Planted completed in under three months. The new capital will expand Planted's robotic fleet and launch its next-generation Sage robot, slated for the field late in 2026.
Where This Fits
Planted joins a growing group of AI-powered energy infrastructure players. See our related coverage of Nomos' €20M for distributed household energy, Toyota–Scania's hydrogen truck pilot, and BYD's solid-state battery push.
Reporting based on coverage from ESG Today, Runtimewire, Mercom Capital and North American Clean Energy.