SoftBank Invests $200M in Gravis Robotics for AI-Powered Construction Automation

Gravis Robotics has raised a $200M Series A led by SoftBank

Gravis Robotics, an ETH Zurich spinout building software that lets excavators and diggers run themselves, has raised a $200m Series A led by SoftBank, a round it bills as the largest ever in construction robotics. The deal confirms reports that surfaced earlier that Masayoshi Son's conglomerate was circling the young company. Gravis, founded in 2022 and headquartered in Zürich with outposts in Austin and Oxford, does not build machines of its own. Instead it makes the brains that bolt onto someone else's: a retrofit control kit called Gravis Rack, and an assistance layer, Gravis Copilot, that between them can turn a mixed fleet of diggers into autonomous or semi-autonomous ones. The software is pitched as manufacturer-agnostic, claiming to run across kit from Caterpillar, John Deere, Volvo, JCB, Hitachi and others, rather than locking buyers into a single brand. The company's framing is that most robotics has taught machines to move through the world without changing it, whereas construction is the opposite: the whole job is to reshape the ground. Gravis says its models are trained heavily in simulation to close the notorious "sim-to-real" gap, letting an excavator work with something closer to factory-floor precision on a muddy, unpredictable site. It claims productivity gains of up to 30% over manual operation, deployments across four continents, and a place on an $8m, UK-government-backed autonomy project with plant-hire firm Flannery. For SoftBank, the cheque fits a pattern. Son has spent the past year assembling what looks like the most ambitious robotics-and-AI portfolio outside China, from reported talks to back an $800m round for Germany's Agile Robots to a torrent of spending on data centres and chips. His thesis, that "physical AI" is where the trillions go next, needs precisely this kind of company: software that makes existing industrial hardware drive itself. Construction is a shrewd place to test the idea. It is a trillion-dollar industry chronically short of skilled operators, dangerous enough that taking humans out of the cab has obvious appeal, and repetitive enough in its digging and grading that automation looks tractable. A retrofit kit also sidesteps the hardest problem in robotics, building reliable hardware from scratch, by riding on machines the industry already owns and trusts, and it lets Gravis sell into fleets without asking anyone to scrap their existing kit. "Largest Series A in construction robotics history" and "up to 30% productivity" are the company's own framing, the kind of superlatives funding announcements are engineered to produce, and a headline gain on a controlled site is not the same as a fleet-wide average in the rain. Autonomous heavy machinery also carries a stiff burden of proof on safety, liability and regulation that no amount of venture capital resolves overnight. There is a SoftBank-shaped asterisk, too. Son's robotics record is not all triumphant, his consumer robot Pepper was quietly discontinued, and his firm's habit of writing enormous cheques has produced spectacular hits and spectacular misses in roughly equal measure. A $200m Series A signals conviction, and perhaps a pre-emptive move to lock up a promising team before rivals can, but it is a bet on a market that has promised full autonomy for years and so far delivered it in slices. Still, the direction is unmistakable. Between cheap Chinese humanoids, warehouse arms and now self-driving excavators, the money chasing physical AI is real and swelling, and SoftBank intends to be its biggest backer even as Son bristles at the word "bubble". Whether Gravis can turn a $200m vote of confidence into diggers that reliably run themselves across thousands of messy sites is the question the next few years, and a great deal of that capital, will answer.

Gravis Robotics gets $200M from SoftBank to retrofit excavators with self-driving AI systems

Gravis Robotics AG said today it has bagged $200 million in funding from SoftBank Group Corp. in what is the largest-ever Series A round for a construction robotics startup. The startup was founded in 2022 after being spun out of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, having developed intelligent, software-defined systems for heavy excavators. Its software transforms them into self-operating machinery that's able to navigate busy construction sites and perform work autonomously, without human drivers. Gravis says the construction industry is crying out for greater automation. While the artificial intelligence infrastructure buildout hogs all of the headlines, physical infrastructure is currently in the midst of a similar expansion, with an urgent need for new homes, roads, transit networks, bridges and power grids. But unlike the AI industry, the construction sector is struggling to keep up with the demand for this new infrastructure. Because of an aging workforce and severe labor shortages, construction firms often struggle to meet their project timelines. At present, the construction industry is one of the world's least automated, being highly reliant on humans to drive its heavy machinery, and that's what Gravis wants to change. But bringing automation to the construction sector is far from simple. In fact, it requires overcoming technical challenges that simply don't exist in other industries, Gravis says. Existing physical AI systems such as autonomous vehicles and robotic arms operate in what the company calls "static environments," where the main objective is to move without disturbing their surroundings. In contrast, heavy machines like excavators do the opposite. Their job is to interfere with the terrain around them, digging through soil and subterranean rock and reshape the landscape they operate in. To overcome this challenge, Gravis' AI models have been trained in simulated environments that attempt to replicate all of the subtle feedback that human excavator operators experience when driving these machines. As co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Dominic Jud explained, humans can listen to the sound of the engine, sense the machine's vibrations and react to hydraulic resistance to "read the earth" they're digging through. "Our AI takes that same physical input and grounds it in machine telemetry, responding to varying subterranean forces and soil mechanics at microsecond speeds," Jud explained. "We didn't try to simplify the world for our software; we gave it the physical intuition to handle real job sites with precision that goes beyond what any human can feel from inside the cab." Gravis's AI models power the Gravis Rack, which is an autonomous control system that can be retrofitted onto existing machines from companies such as Caterpillar Inc., John Deere & Co., JCB International Co. Ltd. and Hitachi Ltd. According to the startup, Gravis Rack enables a 30% boost in productivity compared to driving these machines manually, though the system also acts as a copilot for human operators, in addition to operating machines fully autonomously. The Gravis Rack is a flat, rectangular computing appliance that sits on the roof of the host excavator. It contains not only the chip that runs the system's AI software but also cameras and a lidar sensor. Additional cameras and lidar modules are attached to a pair of rear vehicle masts that come included in the package. According to Gravis, the rear masts host not only sensors but also a GPS module. The location data that GPS satellites beam down to Earth can be imprecise at times. The Gravis Rack uses a technology called GNSS RTS to increase the accuracy of the data. This collects not only GPS measurements, but also technical information about the radio signals that carry those measurements. It analyzes that information to find and fix errors in location data. In some cases, GNSS RTS can boost the accuracy of GPS signals to under an inch. The startup says each excavator is also fitted with a Wi-Fi transmitter. It's responsible for syncing data to and from the Gravis Rack's companion Slate tablet. The tablet enables construction professionals to remotely operate earthmoving vehicles. It displays real-time footage from a vehicle's sensors, overlaying visual cues on the video stream to highlight water pipes and other infrastructure that an excavator should avoid. Additionally, the tablet's interface displays geographic information such as elevation data. The startup says Gravis Rack has been deployed across dozens of job sites globally, but the goal now is to expand the adoption of its platform much more rapidly. One of its main targets is the U.K., where it was recently awarded an $8 million contract to retrofit existing excavator fleets. Co-founder and Chief Executive Ryan Luke Johns stressed the importance of automating excavation work, noting that it's the starting point of every new construction project. "Whether we are building housing, scaling data centers or modernizing energy grids, every project starts with moving earth," he said. "That foundational work has been the bottleneck slowing down the entire built environment."

SoftBank invests $200 million in construction startup Gravis Robotics

SoftBank Group has invested $200 million in Gravis Robotics, a Swiss startup that makes autonomous software for construction machinery. Zurich-based Gravis announced the Series A investment in a statement on Monday but didn't share a valuation. It was reported in July that SoftBank was considering an acquisition of Gravis that might be completed in several stages, which includes injecting fresh capital over time. The deal marks another splashy investment into robotics from SoftBank, whose founder, Masayoshi Son, is trying to make his firm a pivotal player in the global artificial intelligence race. The Japanese investor, which by October is set to own a 13% stake in OpenAI, has backed a range of robotics businesses, including with the acquisition of ABB's industrial unit last year. SoftBank has set up a new holding company, Robo HD, and is planning to establish another robotics and AI firm called Roze in the U.S. Founded as a spin out of ETH Zurich university in 2022, Gravis develops software and hardware for earthmoving equipment. By using its fully autonomous mode, the startup's system lets machine operators "step away into safe and social environments to supervise entire robotic fleets," the company wrote in its statement. The startup also said on Monday that it was selected to retrofit heavy equipment for an $8 million government infrastructure project in the U.K. Gravis previously raised $23 million in a November round round led by IQ Capital and Zacua Ventures.

SoftBank invests $200M in Gravis Robotics for construction AI By Investing.com

Investing.com - SoftBank Group Corp. has invested $200 million in Gravis Robotics, a Swiss startup that develops autonomous software for construction machinery. Zurich-based Gravis announced the Series A investment on Monday but did not disclose a valuation. Bloomberg reported in July that SoftBank was considering an acquisition of Gravis that may be completed in several stages, which includes injecting fresh capital over time. The deal marks another investment into robotics from SoftBank, whose founder, Masayoshi Son, is positioning the firm as a player in the global artificial intelligence race. The Japanese investor, which by October is set to own a 13% stake in OpenAI, has backed a range of robotics businesses, including the acquisition of ABB Ltd.'s industrial unit last year. SoftBank has set up a new holding company, Robo HD, and is planning to establish another robotics and AI firm called Roze in the U.S., Bloomberg reported earlier. Gravis was founded in 2022 and spun out of ETH Zurich. The company's software runs on the Gravis Rack, an autonomous control kit installed across machinery brands including Caterpillar, Case, Develon, John Deere, JCB, Hitachi, Sumitomo, Yanmar and Volvo. The company states its systems deliver up to a 30% boost in jobsite productivity compared to peak manual operation. Gravis has deployed systems alongside infrastructure companies across four continents. The company was recently selected to lead an $8 million U.K. government-backed CAM Pathfinder project in partnership with Flannery Plant Hire. The project involves retrofitting excavator fleets with the Gravis Rack to provide contractors with access to autonomous machinery for Britain's $716 billion infrastructure pipeline. "Physical AI is central to SoftBank's vision for the next phase of AI. Gravis is bringing AI-powered autonomy to construction, helping build smarter, more efficient infrastructure, and we look forward to supporting its mission," said Dai Sakata, Managing Director of SoftBank Group. This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.