Planted

Planted is an Oakland, California company that builds utility-scale and distributed solar power plants using its own planning software, terrain-following solar racking and a fleet of autonomous field installation robots. It describes itself as an autonomous power deployment company and frames power plant construction as a manufacturing problem: the robots are built as production-line units, so the amount of capacity Planted can install grows with the number of machines it fields. The company emerged from stealth in June 2024 and holds California contractor licence CSLB #1154188. Eric Brown is chief executive; Nate Beckett is chief operating officer and Richard Erb is a co-founder.

The system has three parts. The planning software turns site and interconnection data into layouts, energy models and permit-ready drawings, building a digital model of the site that sets the position of every post; designs go straight to the robots without a separate survey-staking step. In the field, the robots drive posts from an on-board magazine, one post per solar module, and a bracket on each post lets the module clip on. Because the posts follow existing ground contours, the arrays can be built on slopes of up to 27% without grading, and the company states its high-density fixed-tilt layout delivers twice the energy per acre of conventional tracker designs. The racking has no moving parts, carries a 20-year product warranty and received independent validation from Black & Veatch. Operations and maintenance use low-profile mowers and standard cleaning equipment, and Planted sells plan, build and operate services under a single turnkey agreement.

Sage is the next-generation field robot, stated to more than double field productivity over the current fleet and scheduled to enter the field in late 2026. Planted reports that the current fleet is fully committed through 2027 and that it has opened 2028 reservations.

Planted deployed more than 10 MW in 2025, targets 100 MW in 2026 and reports a project pipeline above 20 GW. Named projects include the 11 MW Bowes Solar community project in Illinois for Cultivate Power, the Armoracia community solar project acquired by Aligned Climate Capital, a space-constrained Illinois deployment for ENFRA, a Maryland community solar partnership with ZNRG, White Pine distributed projects in Kettleman City, California, and a 28 MW behind-the-meter project for a data centre that went from first call to power in ten months.

The company launched with 20 million US dollars led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Khosla Ventures, later announced a 12 million dollar round, and on 15 September 2026 announced 31.8 million dollars co-led by Piva Capital and RA Capital Management's Planetary Health team, with Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Gigascale Capital, Google and Khosla Ventures participating. It has also received an award from the US Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office.