{"id":106899,"title":"Cosmic Robotics: Autonomous construction on Earth and beyond","tagline":"Robotic construction equipment to build a city on Mars. We’re proving the technology by building large-scale infrastructure on Earth — utility-scale solar farms and hyperscale data centers.","body":"Hey everyone 👋\n\nWe’re [James](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesemerick/) and [Lewis](https://www.linkedin.com/in/lewis-c-jones/) - co-founders of [Cosmic Robotics](https://www.cosmicrobotics.com). \n\n**TL;DR**\n\n**We build robotic construction equipment to build a city on Mars**. We’re proving the technology today by building large-scale infrastructure on Earth – utility-scale solar farms and hyperscale data centers. Our first machine, Cosmic-1, has already installed tens of thousands of solar panels in the field and more than doubled the productivity of traditional crews.\n\n\u003chttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Dl00xlJbcI\u003e \n\n**❌ The problem**\n\nAfter working at NASA JPL, SpaceX, and Relativity Space, we believe rockets are no longer the limiting factor to space exploration and that the first humans will land on Mars by 2034. **The new bottleneck is construction**. We won't be sending thousands of construction workers to Mars to build the energy, compute, and housing needed to sustain even a small city. **It has to be built by robots that don't exist yet**.\n\nOn Earth we have a similar problem - **we’ve lost the ability to build**. Construction productivity has declined for 50 years while manufacturing and agriculture became 10-15x more productive through automation. **The missing technology is robotic manipulation for the tasks still done by hand**: lifting, placing, fastening.\n\nMeanwhile, there is a generational infrastructure buildout happening right now. **$7 trillion** is going into AI data centers, power, and compute over the next six years, **more than the Apollo Program, Manhattan Project, and Interstate Highway System combined**. 40% of US data center projects are running behind schedule, and the skilled labor shortage is the #1 cause. \n\n**🤖 What we've built**\n\nCosmic-1 is a 10,000 lb autonomous robot capable of heavy-lift manipulation. In solar, it picks up 90 lb panels and places them onto racking with millimeter precision in any environment: 100-degree heat, freezing rain, snow, and dust. It seamlessly integrates into existing construction processes. Across tens of thousands of cycles it has more than doubled the labor productivity of solar installation, on some of the largest solar projects in the US.\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=106899\u0026key=user_uploads/522502/bb5f86ec-a23b-4ffd-a173-87f36ce6fb1c)\n\n**👬 The Team**\n\nWe come at this problem from two angles. James (CEO) grew up on construction sites, then spent his career bringing robots to the field with Built Robotics and Autodesk Research. He learned you don't change the oldest industry in the world by disrupting it; you earn your way in by giving crews better tools.\n\nLewis' (CTO) life ambition is to build a city on Mars. His work at NASA, SpaceX, and Relativity Space spans rocket engines, launch vehicles, satellites, space stations, and, yes, Martian robots. When it became clear the space industry was well on its way to Mars, he went looking for the construction robots. When he didn't find them, we started Cosmic.\n\nWe’ve brought together a team of industry experts with experience building robots, rockets, drones, self-driving cars, humanoids, and nuclear reactor operations. We know what it takes to get a machine to show up day-in-day-out on the jobsite.\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=106899\u0026key=user_uploads/522502/87f30a8e-6f83-490e-8bef-04225d1a525e)\n\n**🚀 What's next**\n\nWe're scaling in solar, taking Cosmic-1 into data center construction, and working with NASA on lunar construction robotics. Revenue and data from deployments on Earth train the systems we'll deploy on Mars.\n\n**🙏 Our asks**\n\n1. **Know a hyperscaler or neocloud construction team?** Please connect us.\n2. **Share this post** and [follow our journey](https://www.linkedin.com/company/cosmic-robotics/).\n\n👉 Contact us at [james@cosmicrobotics.com](mailto:james@cosmicrobotics.com) | [cosmicrobotics.com](http://cosmicrobotics.com)","slug":"RoB-cosmic-robotics-autonomous-construction-on-earth-and-beyond","created_at":"2026-07-23T17:36:46.436Z","updated_at":"2026-09-19T01:35:37.486Z","total_vote_count":28,"url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/RoB-cosmic-robotics-autonomous-construction-on-earth-and-beyond","share_image_url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/media/?type=post\u0026id=106899\u0026key=user_uploads/522502/bb5f86ec-a23b-4ffd-a173-87f36ce6fb1c","company":{"id":33012,"name":"Cosmic Robotics","slug":"cosmic-robotics","url":"https://www.cosmicrobotics.com/","logo":"https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/610b3f44c95c65ea346121a48c57b8c81a3788ce.png","batch":"Summer 2026","industry":"Industrials","tags":["Hard Tech","Robotics","Construction","Aerospace"],"search_path":"https://bookface.ycombinator.com/company/33012"}}