Cosmic Robotics: Our Solar Savior
Human Progress Through Energy
The single greatest fundamental lever on the historical advancement of the human race and overall growth in the industrialized world has arguably been energy. Throughout history, humans have been able to invent new ways to create energy to power growing societal needs:
- The mastery of fire by our Homo Erectus ancestors over 1 million years ago
- The creation of the steam engine that powered the Industrial Revolution which ran from 1760 to 1840 where the human economy transitioned to more widespread, efficient and stable manufacturing processes
- The invention of the battery by Alessandro Volta in 1800 that allowed humans to store potential energy for the first time
- Harnessing the power of hydrocarbons, first coal, and then the explosion of the oil and gas industry starting in the mid 1800s that came to dominate nearly every aspect of human life thereafter
- The inventions of direct currents (DC) and alternating currents (AC) by Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla in the 1870s and 1880s that would ultimately enable the electrification of entire cities
- The nuclear era starting in the 1950s and 60s
- And finally, the rise of renewable energy like wind, geothermal and solar starting in the 1970s
It is no coincidence that the exponential rise in US GDP per capita since the founding of our country closely mirrors the growth of total US energy consumption.
And it is also no coincidence that there is a strong correlation between a country’s income per capita and energy consumption per capita. It is true that high-income, low-energy countries do not exist, just as no poor country has ever generated a lot of electricity and stayed poor.
Growth Through Cheaper Energy
As one might expect, when energy prices go up, consumption goes down. This most drastically can be shown through the oil shock of 1973 when a coalition of Arab nations (OPEC), angry at Western support for Israel during the Yom Kippur War, imposed an oil embargo, sending what had been very stable oil prices suddenly skyrocketing:
The US energy consumption per capita that had been rising at a rapid pace since the late 1800s suddenly fell off a cliff as a result.
Because all industrial output requires energy, the more energy costs, the more expensive that output becomes. Additionally, since so much of everyday life in industrial nations revolves around energy consumption — from the electricity used to run all household appliances to the oil responsible for powering cars, trucks, ships, and planes — the more expensive energy is, the more it costs — and thus the harder it is — to do anything. Without ever-cheaper sources of energy, physical innovation is certainly still possible, but it just gets harder.
Today, 40% of our electricity in the US comes from natural gas plants, 20% from coal, 18% from nuclear, and 22% from other renewable sources like wind, hydro, solar and geothermal. As mentioned above, major fluctuations in the price of oil or natural gas (which spiked in 2022 due to a combination of factors, including a sharp increase in demand for natural gas for energy generation, the war in Ukraine and its impact on global gas supplies, supply-chain issues and weather) can have major global economic impacts. Additionally, heavy use of oil and natural gas is one of the the biggest causes of climate change through the release of carbon dioxide and methane gasses. Nuclear energy — while a very promising source of clean energy — is still too expensive and it may be a while before technological advancements in nuclear along with reduced regulatory burdens can make nuclear truly cost competitive with other sources of energy.
This leaves renewables, specifically solar energy as the most viable and cheapest source of energy at our disposal to power humanity’s future growth in the years ahead.
Solar Savior
The biggest energy story of the last fifteen years is the rise of solar photovoltaics as detailed by Brian Potter in his essay Understanding Solar Energy. Annual solar capacity installed in gigawatts has risen 57x from 8 GW installed globally in 2008 to 593 GW in 2024. By some metrics, solar PV has been deployed faster than any other energy source in history, going from 100 terawatt-hours (TWh) of generation to 1,000 TWh in just eight years (and then just an additional 3 years to hit 2,000 TWh), compared to 12 years for wind and nuclear, 28 for natural gas, and 32 for coal.
In 2024, for the first time, solar power supplied more than 2,000 TWh of global electricity, increasing by 474 TWh (+29%) from the previous year. This was the largest increase in generation from any power source in 2024. Solar has now been the largest source of new electricity for three years in a row.
To give a sense of what can be powered by 2,000 TWh of power, below is a table of annual power consumption of various applications. 2,000 TWh of solar could power annually 182M US households, 40 cities the size of New York, all the data centers in the world four times over, 50% of US power consumption or 20% of Chinese power consumption.
In 2024, the US added 50 GW of solar capacity brining our total capacity to 235.7 GW, yet solar still only accounts for 3.4% of total energy generation. However, total US solar capacity is expected to reach 739 GW by 2035 with most major US power utilities announcing large utility-scale solar projects.
The main driver of solar’s dramatic rise is its equally dramatic falling costs. Over the last 10 years, the price of electricity from solar has declined by 89%. Solar’s Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) — the average cost of electricity produced over the lifetime of a solar energy system — varies depending on the system size and location, but generally ranges from $24/MWh to $96/MWh for utility-scale solar and $74/MWh to $229/MWh for unsubsidized rooftop solar in the US. This is compared to an LCOE of $175/MWh for natural gas, $155/MWh for nuclear and $109/MWh for coal.
The main reason solar energy has become so cheap is because since its invention in the 1950s, the cost of solar PV has fallen by a factor of close to 10,000. In the last 10 years alone, the cost of solar PV cells has fallen by more than 50%, and they’re projected to get even cheaper. And unlike nuclear, solar has also gotten cheaper from “learning curves” (the more built, the cheaper it gets to build even more).
A second driver of solar’s uptake has been the falling price of lithium-ion battery storage. Solar’s two main drawbacks are its relatively low efficiency at around 25% for utility-scale solar (efficiency is the fraction of solar energy converted into electrical energy), and its intermittency: solar panels can only generate electricity when sunlight is available, and it can only generate peak electricity when the sun is directly overhead. Solar’s “capacity factor” is the actual amount of energy produced by a solar system over a period of time, compared to the maximum energy it could have produced if operating at full capacity. Hours of daily sunlight, the intensity of sunlight (most influenced by geography and seasonality), and weather are the three greatest effects on solar capacity factor. Solar capacity factors in the US range from 18.7% (in Maine) to 29.4% (in Arizona). Since peak power demand in most cities happens in the mornings and evenings when sunlight luminescence is lower, this mismatch between demand and supply can be managed by storing energy at peak production times in batteries so that it can be drawn when demand is highest. The cost of batteries has fallen by a factor of 7x since 2013.
Solar’s Challenges Ahead
Despite all this good news, there are still major potential roadblocks to solar becoming a dominant form of energy generation in the world — roadblocks that could keep solar at just 5% of total world energy generation and enhancing the risks that human advancement stagnates due to a lack of clean, reliable and cheap energy.
Given the falling costs of solar modules and battery storage, the largest cost drivers in solar today are those associated with the buildout of utility-scale solar farms, with labor being the single biggest line item.
A 1 MW solar power plant roughly costs between $770,000 and $890,000 to build, while a 100 MW power plant can cost between $77M and $89M. The largest utility-scale solar farm in the world, the Talatan Solar Park in China which has a capacity of 15,600 MW had an estimated construction cost of $1.6B.
A 100 MW solar farm typically requires between 400,000 and 600,000 solar panels. This means that for the US to go from 236 GW of solar capacity today to the expected capacity of 739 GW by 2035, between 2B and 3B additional solar panels need to be installed over the next decade at total cost between $50B and $100B+.
Current construction methods involve significant manual labor, requiring workforce growth of over 800,000 laborers to support industry growth. Even so, 88% of employers are struggling to hire and 61% report project delays due to labor shortages. Currently, it takes a 3–5 person crew to complete 300–450 modules of solar installation in a day. Assuming a 4-person crew, working in 8-hour shifts can install 500 solar panels per day, 128M to 193M man hours would be required to hit the US projected solar capacity by 2035. Given the average solar panel installer makes $37/hour, expected labor costs for panel installation alone could total between $4.7B and $7.1B, and that’s assuming enough installers can be found and trained for this work.
Winning the New Solar Energy Race
The United States presently finds itself in a situation we haven’t seen in the last 30 years: today we face an array of threats from near-peer competitors Russia and China not experienced since before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Like in all past near-peer competitions amongst nations, energy security will be a pivotal determinant of leverage and power. Assuring US energy dominance through reliable domestic supply chains and American-made technological development will be critical for the US maintaining its position of influence in the world.
This is why it is so concerning that China is lapping the US on solar electricity generation: their solar generation doubled in the last 2 years to over 72 TWh, compared to under 20 in the US.
And China is not just winning in solar energy produced, they also absolutely dominate the production of solar-grade polysilicon, a key material used in the production of solar cells.
If there truly will be a triumph of electromagnetism over thermodynamics wherein electricity replaces combustion as humanity’s key tool for mastering the physical world, it is critical that the US and our western allies remain competitive in this new solar energy race.
A Cosmic Solution to Solar’s Challenges
We are excited to announce today MaC Venture Capital’s investment into the $4M pre-seed round of Cosmic Robotics, an AI-powered construction technology company with a mission to accelerate the deployment of critical infrastructure. Starting with utility-scale solar, Cosmic is laying the groundwork for a future where construction knows no bounds. This round was led by Giant Ventures with participation from HCVC, and prominent angel investors including Azeem Azhar, Aarthi Ramamurthy, and Nate Williams.
By equipping skilled construction teams with intelligent tools designed for real-world conditions, Cosmic Robotics is helping meet rising demand for clean energy while improving efficiency and expanding workforce capabilities.
Founded in late 2023, Cosmic Robotics is led by James Emerick (CEO), who brings deep experience in field-deployed construction automation from his work at Built Robotics and Autodesk Research, and Lewis Jones (CTO), who helped launch the world’s first 3D-printed rocket at Relativity Space. They’re joined by a growing team of engineering leaders from frontier tech companies like Google, Amazon, SpaceX, and NASA– bringing together aerospace-grade reliability, mission-critical systems thinking, and hard-won field deployment experience.
With Cosmic’s solution, project managers can monitor, optimize, and execute installations faster and more efficiently than with traditional methods. With Cosmic Robotics, solar development companies only need to hire one operator to work together with Cosmic’s 1A autonomous robot to complete 800–1,000 modules a day. Cosmic’s solution is a force amplifier to current crews and helps Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) firms augment and amplify a shrinking labor pool to help them get their work done faster, safer, and more effectively.
Additionally, Cosmic Robotics is developing Constellation, the digital twin platform to coordinate tools, track work-in-progress, manage projects, and generate real-time insights. And Particle, Cosmic’s domain-specific physical AI engine powers real tools in the real world, driving decision-making and adaptability across projects. It turns sensor data into operational insights, automating QA, tracking assets, and routing workflows to keep jobs moving. Particle helps crews adapt in the moment, avoid costly delays, and lays the groundwork for fully autonomous construction.
America’s ingenuity and desire to win, as it has in the past, must shine through in this critical moment. It will be builders like James and Lewis at Cosmic Robotics that help the US remain competitive in this new energy landscape and ensure that on the whole, the human race stays on our ever upward trajectory of prosperity.
Michael Palank led the Cosmic Robotics pre-seed round for MaC Venture Capital.
About MaC Venture Capital
MaC Venture Capital is a seed-stage venture capital firm based in Los Angeles and Silicon Valley that invests in technology startups leveraging shifts in cultural trends and behaviors. The general partners represent diverse backgrounds in technology, business, politics, entertainment and finance, allowing them to accelerate entrepreneurs on the verge of their breakthrough moment. The firm provides hands-on support crucial for building and scaling category-leading companies, including operations strategy, brand building, recruiting, sales development and mission-critical introductions. Find MaC Venture Capital online at https://macventurecapital.com and @MaCVentureCap.
