Gritt is Building Physical AI for Accelerating the World’s Infrastructure Buildout

Gritt, AI that does the hardest work in the hardest places, led by Puneet Puri and Vishal Dugar, has launched with $32.4M in pre-seed and Series A funding. 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.

Gritt’s robotic arms and AI systems integrate with existing jobsite equipment, including skid steers and forklifts, enabling precise material handling, assembly and transportation in dynamic construction environments.

The platform continuously improves through real-world deployments, reducing task training time from months to days as it learns from each operation. By collecting real-time data on construction activities, material movement and site conditions, Gritt provides intelligence that helps supervisors make faster, more informed decisions.

Puneet Puri, CEO and Co-founder of Gritt, said:

“While many industries have embraced automation, outdoor construction remains one of the most challenging environments due to unpredictable terrain, weather and operating conditions. Gritt’s physical AI is designed to operate in these unstructured environments, helping accelerate the construction of critical infrastructure including solar arrays, data centers, bridges and roads.”

Gritt aims to bring automation to construction sites by enabling machines to perform complex physical tasks in real-world conditions, helping the industry build critical infrastructure faster and more efficiently.

The U.S. construction industry is facing a growing labor challenge, with more than 41% of the workforce expected to retire by 2031. At the same time, construction productivity has declined by 46%, even as other industries have benefited from advances in AI and automation.

Automating outdoor construction remains difficult due to unpredictable weather, complex terrain, and constantly changing jobsite conditions. Gritt addresses this challenge by combining proprietary AI with purpose-built hardware designed to operate reliably in real-world construction environments.

Vishal Dugar, CTO and Co-founder of Gritt, said:

“The repetitive, high-volume manual work behind global infrastructure remains largely unsolved. Construction requires an intelligence layer capable of performing complex physical tasks and making decisions in environments that change constantly. This represents one of the most challenging frontiers in physical AI.”

The Gritt team brings deep experience building autonomous systems for challenging environments, with its machines already deployed on real construction sites and used by leading U.S. construction companies, including those developing large-scale solar farms.

Instead of replacing existing equipment, Gritt’s systems integrate with hardware that construction crews already use and maintain. The robots are designed to operate safely alongside workers while performing thousands of precise, repetitive tasks. This approach has enabled the autonomous placement of tens of thousands of solar panels with zero breakages.

Andrew Beebe, Managing Director at Obvious Ventures, said:

“Every major wave of automation has been driven by teams willing to tackle the hardest and most unpredictable environments. Gritt is bringing physical AI to challenging construction sites, where each deployment generates valuable data that makes the system smarter and more capable. This compounding advantage positions the company to define a new category in physical AI.”

In the future, Gritt’s intelligence layer could serve as an AI assistant for construction supervisors, analyzing resource flows, anticipating issues and helping coordinate decisions to keep projects on track.

The company’s vision is to create a more efficient construction industry where workers move away from dangerous, physically demanding tasks, contractors complete projects faster and critical infrastructure can be built at the scale society requires.