Planted Raises $31.8 Million on a 28 MW, 10-Month Data Center Build
- AI Energy Demand Data Centers News
Marin Holt
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- 7 minutes read
- Series B: $31.8 million
- Data center array: 28 MW behind the meter
- Schedule: 10 months first call to power, 3 months field construction
- Deployment: 10 MW in 2025, 100 MW target for 2026
- Pipeline: more than 20 GW
Planted, the California company that builds solar farms with field robots, closed a $31.8 million Series B on September 15, 2026. Google joined the round. Piva Capital and RA Capital Management Planetary Health co-led it, with Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Gigascale Capital and Khosla Ventures also taking part. The company points to a 28 MW behind-the-meter array it built for a neocloud data center, and says that project ran 10 months from the first call to delivered power, with 3 months of field construction.
The pitch is speed and land. Planted deployed more than 10 MW in 2025. It targets 100 MW in 2026, a tenfold jump in one year, against a stated pipeline of more than 20 GW. Its next robot, called Sage, reaches the field in late 2026.
Why It Matters
Data center developers rarely wait on panels. They wait on interconnection queues and on gas turbines with multi-year lead times. A behind-the-meter array sidesteps the first problem, because the power never touches a transmission line the utility has to study.
That is what makes the 10-month figure the number to watch, rather than the funding total. Eric Brown, founder and chief executive of Planted, argues the industry has too many hand-built steps. “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 said.
Land matters for the same reason. Planted says its next project for Aligned Climate Capital, called Armoracia, fits on 16 acres, which is 10 acres less than the original design needed. Denser arrays shrink the permitting surface and the neighbor count, and both drive schedule.
What the Numbers Do Not Say
Planted has not named the neocloud customer behind the 28 MW array, and it has not published a cost per watt. A 10-month schedule on one behind-the-meter project does not prove a repeatable 100 MW year.
The company’s Illinois project also carries two different capacity figures in public accounts. Planted’s own announcement puts Bowes Solar, built for Cultivate Power, at 11 MW. Latitude Media described the same Illinois community solar project as 7.3 MW. Neither account states whether the figure is AC or DC, so this article does not treat either number as settled.
Scale is the open question. Solar PV set a record at 664 gigawatts installed worldwide in 2025, and Planted’s own release argues the world needs terawatts of new generation a year rather than gigawatts. Brown told Latitude Media that Planted’s current robot fleet is booked through the end of 2027, and that expanding the fleet is what lets the company work through its more-than-20-GW pipeline.
Critical Perspective
The 10-month schedule rests on one project, and Planted has not named the customer. It also published no cost per watt. A behind-the-meter array that beats an interconnection queue is worth little if it costs more per megawatt than the queue it skipped, and nothing in the announcement settles that.
Two of the company’s own numbers pull against each other. Brown says the current robot fleet is booked through the end of 2027. The same release targets 100 MW in 2026, up from more than 10 MW in 2025. A fleet already booked is the constraint on a tenfold jump, which is why the Sage robot arriving late in 2026 matters more to that target than the funding does. The 20 GW figure is a pipeline, and the company has not said how much of it sits under contract.
Public accounts of the same Illinois project also disagree. Planted’s own release puts Bowes Solar at 11 MW, while Latitude Media describes the Illinois community solar project as 7.3 MW. Neither states whether the figure is AC or DC. For a company whose argument is measured in megawatts delivered per month, that gap is worth closing.
