Addressing Construction Labor Shortage: ASI and SoftBank Partner for Autonomous Fleets

Autonomous Solutions Inc., or ASI, and SoftBank Group Corp. last week announced a joint venture to market brand-agnostic autonomous heavy equipment to address critical labor shortages and speed up infrastructure projects around the world.

“Large infrastructure projects, from roads to airports to rail and waste management, are being built at a pace and complexity that traditional labor-intensive methods struggle to match,” said Mel Torrie, chief executive of ASI. The robot report. “Qualified equipment operators are hard to find, and coordinating mixed fleets on a large jobsite is a real bottleneck. That’s exactly what this joint venture was created to do: bring autonomous, OEM-independent fleet coordination to that kind of scale.”

Founded in 2000, ASI developed the Mobius industrial autonomous fleet orchestration system. The Mendon, Utah-based company said its systems work in mixed-vehicle environments and offer long-term scalability and operational efficiency. Its clients include global Fortune 500 companies in industries such as heavy construction, agriculture, logistics and landscaping.

The partners aim to modernize construction with software-defined robotics

ASI said its expanded partnership with SoftBank represents a major effort to modernize civil construction through open architecture robotics. The companies said the initiative offers contractors a scalable, software-based path to automate high-capacity operations at every stage of development.

“This joint venture with SoftBank positions ASI at the forefront of autonomous construction innovation: built at scale, designed for longevity, and open to all major equipment brands on the jobsite,” Torrie said. “Together, we offer OEM-neutral heavy equipment automated solutions that enable customers to deploy mixed fleets of haul trucks, dozers, loaders, compactors and more, all working together autonomously on complex tasks from earthmoving to vertical construction.”

Editor’s Note: Torrie will speak at RoboBusiness 2026 on October 20 in a session titled “Designing the Robotics Ecosystem for Outdoor Autonomy.” Register now so you don’t miss this and all the other current topics of the event.

SoftBank supports ASI’s business expansion

As part of the collaboration, SoftBank provided $225 million in new financing to ASI.

“Backed by world-class capital and more than 25 years of proven technology, we’re not just advancing autonomy: we’re inviting the industry’s leading builders of large infrastructure projects, such as roads, airports, rail, waste management and other adjacent applications, to shape the future of construction with us,” Torrie noted.

Asked if there’s more to this than a software services company, Torrie responded: “The joint venture is specifically about developing and marketing autonomous construction equipment for large infrastructure projects. The ASI platform already orchestrates mixed fleets of equipment in production today, across haul trucks, dozers, loaders and compactors; it’s about bringing that capability to a scale that requires real capital behind it, in everything from earthmoving to vertical construction.”

He said infrastructure investment tends to be concentrated where active public and private capital flows into large projects: road expansion, airport modernization, rail and similar large-scale construction. How does ASI intend to spend its new funding?

“The goal is to grow ASI’s business operations in the broader construction market,” Torrie said.