Overview
- Gravis said Monday that SoftBank led a $200 million Series A that values the Zurich startup at about $1 billion and makes this one of the largest early-stage raises in construction robotics.
- The company's Gravis Rack is a bolt-on autonomy kit that adds supervised and autonomous controls to existing excavators and other heavy machines without replacing the fleet.
- Gravis says the Rack has been installed on machines from Caterpillar, John Deere, Volvo, JCB and others, and the firm claims up to roughly 30% productivity gains on job sites.
- SoftBank's stake follows July talks about a possible acquisition and fits its wider strategy of assembling industrial robotics assets after moves such as buying ABB’s robotics unit and creating Robo HD.
- Gravis plans to use the funding to scale global deployments and staff, secure partnerships and run an $8 million UK retrofit trial, but the company still faces safety, field‑scale and OEM‑competition hurdles before broad commercial rollout.