Google and a fund created by Bill Gates invested in California-based startup Planted, which raised $31.8 million to expand a fleet of robots that work directly on solar park installation and launch a new generation of machines called Sage. Piva Capital and RA Capital Management Planetary Health led the investment, while Google, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Khosla Ventures, and Gigascale Capital also participated. Breakthrough Energy Ventures was born from Bill Gates’ initiative to fund climate technologies, and Gigascale Capital was founded by Mike Schroepfer, a former executive at Meta. The funding comes as the company claims demand for the robots already exceeds its current capacity. After deploying more than 10MW in 2025, the company stated it aims for 100MW this year, a tenfold increase within a year, and its potential project pipeline has already surpassed 20 GW. Planted is attempting to transform the entire construction process of a solar plant into something of a production line, with software, photovoltaic structures and field robotics to reduce stages that currently take up months or even years. Instead of treating every solar plant as an individual project, the company aims to turn deployment into a repeatable process, using an integrated system that combines software planning, high-density solar structures that follow the topography, field storage, and robotics.