Monarch Tractor’s collapse ends with acquisition by Caterpillar

Monarch Tractor’s assets were acquired by construction giant Caterpillar after the company struggled to transform itself into a software services business, according to a filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

The acquisition, first reported by Bloomberg, caps a tough few years for Monarch, as the company experienced multiple layoffs, was sued by three different dealers and lost its primary contract manufacturing partner to Foxconn. It also comes just weeks after co-founder and wine heir Carlo Mondavi said he was being “kicked out” after disagreeing with CEO Praveen Penmezza’s software-driven approach.

Mondavi could not be reached for comment. Penmezza declined to comment beyond Monarch’s statement last week, which said its technology was acquired by an unspecified “large global equipment manufacturer.” Caterpillar did not respond to a request for comment.

Monarch has raised more than $200 million in the past eight years. It was founded in 2018 by Mondavi, Penmezza and former Tesla executive Mark Schwager. The goal was to build a “driver-optional” electric tractor that could also autonomously navigate wineries, orchards, and dairy farms.

Monarch initially began manufacturing small tractors at its facility in Livermore, Calif., but eventually partnered with Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn to become one of four companies to occupy a former General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio.

Foxconn had planned to build vehicles for EV startups Fisker, Lordstown Motors and IndiEV, as well as tractors for Monarch. But Foxconn only built a few electric trucks for Lordstown Motors (which bought the factory) before the company went bankrupt. Fisker and Indy EV also went bankrupt before Foxconn could build future vehicles for those companies at its factories. Foxconn manufactured hundreds of Monarch tractors at the factory, but the electronics giant sold the factory to SoftBank in August 2025, leaving Monarch without a manufacturer.

At that point, the Monarchs were already struggling. The company laid off staff in early 2024 before closing a $133 million funding round. Just a few months later, the company announced it would lay off more employees and reorganize to focus on licensing its software and self-driving technology.

Dealers who bought Monarch tractors say the company’s self-driving technology didn’t work well from the start. A dealer who sued Monarch in September 2025 said the tractors were “defective” and “incapable of autonomous driving.” (Monarch denied this claim in court filings.) Two other dealers have since filed similar federal lawsuits against Monarch. In one case, Monarch’s former attorney wrote in a January filing that Monarch entered into an assignment in lieu of Chapter 7 bankruptcy for the benefit of its creditors.

Mondavi spoke about his resignation last month in a comment on an Instagram post from a farmer who complained about Monarch tractors. The winemaker wrote that he quit over a year ago due to “fundamental differences in approach” after experiencing “reliability issues” with Monarch tractors on his farm and a friend’s farm.

“I wanted to address these issues through hardware changes, but the CEO believed they could be better solved through software. I strongly believed in another path, but was ultimately thwarted and pushed out with another co-founder,” he writes.

The company auctioned off most of its remaining tractors earlier this year.