Gravis Robotics raises €172 million for autonomous heavy equipment

Gravis Robotics has raised €172 million ($200 million) in a SoftBank-led Series A, giving the Swiss construction-autonomy company an €862 million post-money valuation. The company develops a retrofit system combining sensors, computing hardware and software for excavators and other heavy equipment. Gravis says the system is used across four continents and plans to use the funding to expand its team, enter more international markets and increase commercial deployments. The company reports productivity improvements of about 30% on several projects, compared with human-operated equipment.