Charge Robotics, founded by MIT alumni Banks Hunter and Max Justicz, has raised $22 million to move its portable robotic assembly factories from prototype to commercial deployment. The company plans to begin its first commercial installations later this year.
The factories are designed to automate the construction of utility-scale solar farms—a process that currently relies on thousands of workers manually assembling millions of panels by hand.
Charge Robotics secures $22 million for commercial solar factory deployments
Charge Robotics launched in 2021 with a focused goal: automate the installation of utility-scale solar farms. The company just raised $22 million to fund its first commercial deployments, expected later in 2025.
The raise follows a real milestone. In early 2024, Charge deployed a prototype system with SOLV Energy, one of the largest solar installers in the U.S., and actually built a working solar farm with it. That proof-of-concept shifted the conversation from skepticism to investment.
The timing matters. Solar energy accounted for 81% of new U.S. electric capacity added in 2024—a level of demand that puts serious pressure on the industry’s ability to build fast enough. That’s exactly the gap Charge is trying to close.
Labor shortages and manual installation drive the need for automation
As solar panel prices have dropped sharply over recent decades, installation costs have grown to represent a larger share of total project expenses. The panels themselves are cheaper. Getting them in the ground is still slow and expensive.
Utility-scale solar farms are massive undertakings. A single site can require millions of panels, and historically every one of them has been assembled and fastened by hand. Hunter describes visiting a site in the Mojave Desert that looked like “a massive dust bowl,” with thousands of workers spending months repeating the same manual tasks.
Labor shortages are making this worse. Hunter says every major solar company he spoke with identified workforce constraints as their biggest barrier to scaling—projects have slowed, and some have been canceled entirely.
You can’t transform the energy grid at the speed the industry needs if every panel still requires manual installation. That’s the core problem Charge was built to solve.
How the portable factory system works
The Charge system works like a portable assembly line. The factory ships directly to the project site, where steel tracks, mounting brackets, fasteners, and solar panels get loaded in, and the line then robotically assembles all the components automatically.
What comes out is a completed solar bay — a 40-foot section of solar farm weighing around 800 pounds. A robotic vehicle picks up each finished bay and positions it in its final spot in the field. The system automates all mechanical installation except for driving the initial metal stakes into the ground.
Quality control is built in. Machine-vision systems scan each component as it moves through the line, catching issues before they become problems. The system is also designed to work with the most common solar parts and panel sizes, which makes it practical across a wide range of projects—not just specialized ones.
Scalability is one of its biggest advantages. Multiple factories can run at the same site simultaneously, around the clock, completing projects significantly faster without dramatically expanding the workforce.
Founders’ background and path from MIT to solar robotics
Hunter studied mechanical engineering at MIT, where hands-on, project-based coursework shaped how he approached engineering problems. After graduating, he joined Vicarious Surgical—a medical robotics startup founded by MIT alumni—as its second employee and spent five years there before co-founding Charge.
Justicz majored in mechanical engineering and computer science at MIT. He and Hunter had talked about starting a company together as early as 2017, though they took time to figure out where to focus. Both cared about climate change and wanted to build something with genuine impact.
That led them to energy. After cold-calling hundreds of people across the industry, they concluded that solar was the right bet—not just for its environmental potential but because its costs were falling faster than any other energy source in history. The sector had momentum; it just had a construction problem.
Their approach to deployment is collaborative rather than disruptive. Charge plans to partner with solar construction firms, running its factories alongside existing crews. Workers shift from manual assembly to operating robotic equipment remotely. Materials arrive on pallets; the system handles the rest.
What this means for solar energy growth
Charge Robotics is entering commercial deployment at a moment when the solar industry’s growth is being constrained by the very bottleneck it was built to address. Labor shortages are real, project timelines are stretching, and demand shows no sign of slowing.
The $22 million funds the first commercial installations, expected to begin later in 2025. The prototype deployment with SOLV Energy demonstrated that the system holds up in real-world field conditions — a critical step from concept to product.
The core proposition is straightforward: ship more factories to a site, run them continuously, and complete larger projects faster with the same number of people. Whether that model holds at commercial scale is still an open question. But the funding, the field results, and the broader industry context all suggest a company that’s moved well past the proof-of-concept stage.
Kelly is an experienced writer with 15 years of experience exploring the big stories that shape our world, from tech breakthroughs and space exploration to climate, energy, and the fascinating quirks of science. She has a talent for turning complex ideas into sharp, memorable insights that stay with readers long after they’ve finished reading.
