SoftBank Group is weighing a deal for Gravis Robotics, a Swiss ETH Zurich spinout that fits standard excavators with the sensors and software to run themselves, extending Masayoshi Son’s year-long robotics buying spree from the factory floor to the building site, Bloomberg reported Friday.
An ETH Zurich spinout with autonomy on the roof
Founded in 2022 out of ETH Zurich’s Robotic Systems Lab, Gravis retrofits standard construction machinery rather than building robots from scratch. Its rooftop Rack hardware fuses five surround cameras, LiDAR, GNSS positioning and hydraulic sensors, while operators drive the machine through a rugged tablet called Slate that can flip between manual and autonomous modes. Gravis says the setup can lift site output by roughly 30% and is already at work on active jobsites across seven countries, including for contractor Taylor Woodrow at Manchester Airport, plant-hire firm Flannery and cement group Holcim in its quarries.
Terms undisclosed, discussions early-stage
Bloomberg said the size, structure and valuation of any transaction have not been decided and the talks are at an early stage. SoftBank could execute the deal in several tranches by buying existing shares and injecting fresh capital over time, and would house the stake in a new US-based AI and robotics vehicle, provisionally called Roze, that the group is preparing to float at a reported $100 billion valuation. Gravis previously raised roughly $23 million in November 2025 in a round co-led by IQ Capital and Zacua Ventures, with participation from Pear VC, Sunna Ventures and Holcim.
The next leg of SoftBank’s physical-AI thesis
The talks would join a run of similar moves. SoftBank agreed last October to buy ABB’s robotics division for $5.4bn, is reportedly anchoring a fresh ~$800m round for Munich-based Agile Robots, and last year put $500m into general-purpose robot-brains startup Skild AI. Even as it wraps up an older bet by selling its remaining Boston Dynamics stake to Hyundai, Masayoshi Son has been openly telegraphing that the next frontier for AI is giving software a body — and construction, with its acute shortage of skilled operators, is a logical proving ground alongside earlier bets on humanoids like NEURA Robotics and Travis Kalanick’s Atoms.
Reporting based on coverage from Bloomberg and The Next Web.