ETH Zurich spinout Gravis Robotics raised a $200M Series A led by SoftBank, described as the largest ever funding round in construction robotics. The company builds a retrofit kit, Gravis Rack, and an assistance layer, Gravis Copilot, that turn excavators from manufacturers like Caterpillar, Volvo, and John Deere into autonomous or semi-autonomous machines. It claims up to 30% productivity gains, deployments on four continents, and simulation-heavy training to close the sim-to-real gap. The funding fits SoftBank's broader push into 'physical AI,' alongside talks to back Germany's Agile Robots, though the piece notes the superlatives are the company's own framing and autonomous heavy machinery still faces major safety, liability, and regulatory hurdles.
