EU-Startups reported that a $1bn post-money valuation is the end result of the funding round, in which Japan’s SoftBank was the sole investor.

Swiss construction-tech start-up Gravis Robotics is reportedly Europe’s newest robotics unicorn after raising $200m in Series A funding.

According to EU-Startups, a $1bn post-money valuation is the end result of the funding round, in which Japan’s SoftBank was the sole investor.

Gravis makes AI software and hardware to retrofit and upgrade existing heavy construction machinery for automation and autonomy. It said the round marked “the largest Series A in construction robotics history” but did not share its valuation upon the announcement of funding yesterday (17 August).

Gravis said its overall goal is “scaling autonomous heavy machinery across jobsites globally”, adding that the heavy construction sector “remains one of the least automated major industries in the world” and still uses “machines that operate exactly the way they did 50 years ago”.

The 2022-founded company, a spin-out from ETH Zurich, said its technology – which is compatible with a range of heavy machinery brands – is capable of “delivering up to a 30pc boost in jobsite productivity compared to peak manual operation, while simultaneously improving overall worksite safety”.

Gravis’s offering covers a full spectrum between AI-augmented manual control and full autonomy, it said, allowing machine workers to ‘co-pilot’ an AI-assisted machine from the operator’s seat or “step away into safe and social environments to supervise entire robotic fleets at once”.

“Skilled operators read the earth through subtle physical feedback – listening to the engine strain, sensing the machine vibration and reacting to hydraulic resistance,” said Dominic Jud, CTO and co-founder of Gravis.

“Our AI takes that same physical input and grounds it in machine telemetry, responding to varying subterranean forces and soil mechanics at microsecond speeds. We didn’t try to simplify the world for our software – we gave it the physical intuition to handle real jobsites with precision that goes beyond what any human can feel from inside the cab.”

The company – headquartered in Zurich and with offices in Oxford, UK and Austin, US – has deployed its systems for construction in four continents to date. It said the funding would be used to scale the rollout of its technology.

“Whether we are building housing, modernising energy grids or scaling data centres, every project starts with moving earth,” said Ryan Luke Johns, the CEO and co-founder of Gravis.

“Our machines are built for the messy, unscripted reality of live jobsites that breaks traditional automation.”

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.