DEWALT says its DALE drilling robot has now put more than 385,000 holes into data center slabs, about four times the count it reported at launch in January, and TIME named it to its Best Inventions of 2026 list on Oct. 16. The company still hasn’t named a single customer, contractor or project.
Stanley Black & Decker, which owns the DEWALT brand, announced the TIME recognition from Towson, Md. DALE was built with August Robotics, a mobile robotics company founded in 2017, and runs on August’s autonomous drilling and fleet orchestration software. DEWALT bills it as the first fleet-capable downward drilling robot.
What the DALE drilling robot does
Data halls need floor holes by the thousands. They anchor server rack stops and the structural legs that carry overhead mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems, and every one has to land at a set location and depth. Today that’s a layout crew followed by workers on hammer drills, bent over a slab for weeks.
DALE drills those holes on its own, and several units can be dispatched across a floor plate as a fleet. DEWALT claims drilling speeds up to 10 times faster than conventional methods. It entered the market earlier this year aimed specifically at data center work.
The robot’s numbers moved fast since January
At the World of Concrete launch on Jan. 20, the pilot figures were 90,000-plus holes over 10 data center phases for one unnamed hyperscaler, 80 weeks cut from timelines and 99.97% accuracy in hole location and depth. The October release lists more than 385,000 holes across 44 phases, more than 300 weeks saved and accuracy of “over 99%.”
Two things stand out. Volume more than quadrupled in nine months, which suggests the robot is past the demo stage. And the accuracy claim got vaguer. At 99.97%, 90,000 holes means roughly 27 misses. “Over 99%” across 385,000 holes could mean anything up to about 3,850. DEWALT didn’t say which it is.
The weeks-saved figure needs a caveat too. Adding up schedule savings across 44 phases says little about any one project’s critical path, since drilling often runs in parallel with other work. Neither release gives a price or a cost per hole, though January’s said that cost dropped “radically.”
Construction robotics and the data center bet
Data centers are the right first market. The slabs are flat and open, the work repeats, and owners pay for speed. Electrical contractors on these jobs already face 12- to 18-month schedules, and prefab vendors such as Flex are pitching factory-built modules on the same promise of compressed timelines.
A TIME list isn’t field validation. Its editors picked 300 entries for originality, efficacy, ambition and impact. The test that matters is whether a named GC or MEP sub puts its own production rates next to DEWALT’s. Until that happens, 385,000 holes is a vendor count. It’s a big one.