In addition to its investments in enhanced geothermal, long-duration energy storage, and fourth-generation nuclear, Google is betting a very Silicon Valley-type approach to solar can help meet the moment for speed-to-power.
The latest addition to the hyperscaler’s energy investment portfolio, Planted Solar, uses a combination of robots and software to build solar projects more quickly and flexibly. The company, which today announced a $31.8 million Series B, is increasingly focused on projects that are co-located with data centers.
Aside from Google, the investors behind its raise are heavyweights in the energy and climate space, including round co-leaders Piva Capital and RA Capital Management Planetary Health, as well as Open-AI backer Khosla Ventures, Bill Gates-founded Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and Gigascale Capital, founded by former Meta executive Mike Schroepfer. Many are repeat investors in Planted.
Planted Solar’s approach to next-generation solar, founder and CEO Eric Brown explained to Latitude Media earlier this year, is both simpler and more high-tech than traditional solar. The company uses software to create a digital twin of the site that includes the precise locations of all components, which are then installed by Planted’s robots — custom-built tracked hydraulic machines that traverse uneven ground and use millimeter-level precision. But Planted’s projects use extremely basic components, including commodity tubing used for posts, and the custom-designed brackets that clip standard, fixed modules into those posts. And its approach means there’s no grading required, which simplifies permitting and speeds up construction.
The availability of the installation machines is the main constraint on Planted’s growth, Brown said: The company’s current fleet is booked through the end of 2027, and expanding it will help Planted work through its more-than-20-GW pipeline. Adding more machines and upgrading the fleet which is shipped to sites around the country on flatbed trucks, is central to the latest raise.
Planted’s existing fleet includes the first generation of installation robots — modified Caterpillar tractors with a human in the cab, ensuring each physical post is aligned with its planned location on the digital twin. But armed with more funding, the company will start to build out its next generation of robots, which will be fully autonomous and twice as efficient in the field compared to the current generation. Dubbed “Sage,” this generation of machines is already being manufactured by a network of contractors that build industrial tracked platforms; Planted then equips them with its own robotics and control systems.
The company is betting that this new and improved fleet will help it multiply its current output by 10 times in just a year: It plans to build as much as a gigawatt of capacity in 2027, up from the 10 MW it deployed in 2025, and the 100 MW planned for this year.
Powering AI with renewables
Planted Solar wasn’t specifically founded to address the AI boom’s energy needs. But the company’s thesis — that the solar industry needs to be faster, more efficient, and more flexible in order to be a significant part of meeting load growth — is well-suited for the current moment. And it has landed well with the tech sector companies flooding Planed’s pipeline, Brown said.
“We’ve thought about this very deliberately to cut all of the steps and processes [that can be eliminated], and automated what’s left over,” he added.
Despite the data center market’s current obsession with gas, clean energy projects are still gaining momentum among the major AI players. That’s thanks not to a renewed focus on emissions on the part of big tech companies, but more to the fact that clean energy is fast to build — and the AI race means that speed is of the essence.
It’s also partly in response to the rising tide of opposition to data centers nationwide, which some hyperscalers are hoping that cheap, clean energy could help combat. xAI built solar and batteries near its Colossus data center in Tennessee after first using dozens of unpermitted off-grid gas turbines. And Oracle and OpenAI are looking to fund 2 GW of clean energy to offset emissions from a fuel cell-powered Stargate project in New Mexico, amid significant pushback at a state and local level stemming from plans to power the project first with gas turbines, and then with fuel cells.
Planted, for its part, has already been called upon to help mitigate opposition and permitting challenges, both to data centers, and to renewables themselves. In Illinois, for example, Planted is in the process of building a 7.3 MW community solar project that almost didn’t get across the finish line thanks to local concerns about land use and property values. In that case, a county zoning board initially rejected the project, but by decreasing both expected damage to the topsoil and the amount of land needed, the developer was able to get the project back on track, meeting community demands for setbacks from nearby neighborhoods.
