Gritt launches with $32.4M in funding to build physical AI that accelerates global infrastructure buildout

Gritt, a San Francisco-based company that is building an intelligent system combining robotics and AI to accelerate the world’s infrastructure buildout, launched with $32.4 million in pre-seed and Series A funding.

The company said that the $26M Series A was led by Obvious Ventures, with participation from Union Square Ventures and Active Impact Investments, and support from previous investors First Round Capital, Climactic, Congruent Ventures and VSC Ventures.

Intelligent automation for solar energy construction

Gritt said that its robotic arms and AI connect to existing jobsite equipment, such as skid steers and forklifts, enabling the system to pick and place, assemble and transport materials with millimeter precision in ever-changing environments.

The company said that its system learns quickly from every deployment and is highly adaptable, so a task that took months to train the first time now only takes days. By deploying its machines across large-scale construction sites, Gritt said that it can capture and process real-time data on completed work, material movement and site conditions, using its intelligence to help supervisors make better decisions.

"Every industry has embraced automation, but outdoor construction sites are exposed, with unforgiving terrain and variable weather. You can't tell a construction site to be less muddy or to stop snowing,” said Puneet Puri, co-founder and CEO of Gritt. “Gritt's physical AI is designed to work in this unstructured, outdoor world. Infrastructure is what moves civilization forward, and now Gritt can help build it faster - including solar arrays, data centers, bridges and roads.”

Gritt said that the team has spent their careers making autonomy work in unforgiving environments, and its machines are already on real sites, trusted by top 10 U.S. construction companies, including those building massive solar farms. Rather than replacing existing equipment, Gritt said that its systems attach to the proven hardware that crews already own and know how to maintain. The company said that this allows the technology to operate safely alongside workers within strict safety bounds while executing thousands of precise, repetitive movements without a miss.

“Nobody is solving the repetitive, high-volume manual work that shapes the world’s infrastructure," said Vishal Dugar, co-founder and CTO of Gritt. “We need an intelligence layer that can complete dexterous tasks and make decisions in an environment that changes every hour. This is one of the most challenging frontiers in physical AI.”

In the future, Gritt said that its decision-making intelligence layer can act as a powerful agent for general site supervisors, understanding resource flows, anticipating problems and even directly making the calls to keep a project moving. The company said that its goal is to create a healthy construction market where workers trade the dangerous, backbreaking tasks for ones worth showing up for.

"Every wave of automation started with someone willing to go where the work was hardest and least predictable," said Andrew Beebe, managing director at Obvious Ventures. "Gritt is bringing physical AI to the toughest construction sites in the world. Every site they deploy builds the flywheel that makes the system smarter and more capable. That's a compounding advantage that's challenging to replicate from the outside. We look forward to helping Gritt build this new and ambitious category in physical AI.”