SoftBank puts $225 million into a Cache Valley robot company

SoftBank Group has invested $225 million in Autonomous Solutions, Inc., the self-driving vehicle company headquartered in Mendon, up in Cache Valley. The two also formed a joint venture to build and sell autonomous construction equipment for roads, airports, railways and waste sites. ASI announced both on September 24 in a release datelined Mendon.

It is a big number for a company that rarely makes the news down the Wasatch Front, and part of the business it funds already mows commercial turf.

The numbers

The $225 million is a direct investment in ASI, which the company says is for growing its commercial operations across the construction market. The joint venture is a separate pot. ASI says SoftBank capitalized it "for meaningful scale" but gives no dollar figure, no ownership split and no name, so anyone quoting a total above $225 million is guessing.

What ASI sells is software, not machines. Its platform, Mobius, runs fleets of self-driving work vehicles and is built to work across brands, so a contractor can run haul trucks, dozers, loaders and compactors from different manufacturers as one autonomous fleet. ASI CEO Mel Torrie put it this way in the release: the joint venture is "open to every major equipment brand on the jobsite."

ASI has been at this for 25+ years and says on its own site that it has 1,000+ vehicles deployed across construction, logistics, agriculture and landscaping. The release lists offices in Salt Lake City, Dallas/Fort Worth and Longmont, Colorado, alongside the Mendon headquarters.

The mower most people missed

The landscaping line is the part that touches an ordinary commercial property. In March, ASI bought Scythe Robotics, the Colorado company behind the M.52 autonomous commercial mower. Scythe says its mowers cut nearly 2 billion sq ft in 2025 across 30 states, and it keeps running as a brand inside ASI Landscaping.

The M.52 spec sheet is modest and specific: a 52 in deck, 1.5 acres an hour, 6 to 8 hours on a charge, cut height from 1.5 to 6 in. It is all-electric and sold to landscape maintenance contractors, not to building owners. Scythe's own case studies claim it added 20% to one crew's capacity and turned 3 and 4 person crews into 2 person crews. Those are the company's numbers from its own customers, and they should be read that way.

For scale, the Pudu GT5 we wrote about last week claims about 2 acres an hour on a 60 in cut. Two different approaches to the same grounds contract, one from a floor cleaning company moving outdoors and one from an off-road autonomy company moving onto turf.

What this means for a building in Utah

Most of this money is headed for earthmoving, not your lobby. Nobody running a school, a dealership or an office park along I-15 should expect a self-driving compactor in the parking lot next spring. The joint venture is aimed at large infrastructure jobs, and ASI has not named a single project.

The landscaping piece is closer. If you contract out grounds care, the more likely way autonomy reaches your property is through your landscaper, not through a purchase order you sign. A contractor that can cut the same acreage with a smaller crew has room to hold a price when labor gets harder to find, and a well-funded parent makes that equipment easier for them to get. When your grounds contract comes up for renewal, it is fair to ask whether they run any autonomous mowers, who supervises the machine while it works, what it does around sprinkler heads, park strips and detention basins, and whose insurance covers it.

There is also a hiring angle. A Cache Valley company with $225 million in new capital will be hiring engineers and field technicians, and so will everyone competing with it. Anyone in Utah who services robots, ours included, will feel that in the labor market.

The paved side of a property is further along than the turf. Sweeping parking structures, loading docks and rough concrete is work a machine already does on a schedule today. The MT1 Max is $25,000 on our published price list and is built for exactly that kind of semi-outdoor floor. Grass is the harder problem, and it is the one this money is chasing.

What to watch

Whether ASI names the joint venture and its first infrastructure customer, and whether that customer is a Utah road or airport project. On the grounds side, watch whether Scythe mowers start showing up on Utah commercial landscaping contracts in the 2027 season, and whether the 1.5 acres an hour holds up on a Utah campus in July, with slopes, park strips and sprinklers, rather than on a flat demo lawn.

Robots in this story, sold and serviced from Provo: MT1 sweeper