DEWALT's DALE drilling robot passes 385,000 holes as weeks saved per phase slip from 8 to about 6.8

DEWALT's DALE drilling robot has drilled more than 385,000 holes across 44 phases of data center construction and saved more than 300 weeks of project time, the company said on Oct 16, the day it was named to TIME's Best Inventions of 2026 in the Robotics category.

Those totals keep climbing because DALE is drilling more phases. Against DEWALT's own figures, weeks saved per phase slip from 8.0 at the January unveiling, to about 7.3 at the July commercial launch, to about 6.8 in October, while the accuracy the company reports has loosened from 99.97% to "over 99%".

From a one-customer pilot to commercial orders in July

DALE became available for commercial order on Jul 9. Bill Beck, president of Tools & Outdoor at Stanley Black & Decker, called the earlier work a "year-long pilot with one of the world's most influential technology leaders." DEWALT first showed the robot at World of Concrete in Las Vegas on Jan 20 and credited a pilot with one hyperscaler with 80 weeks saved across 10 phases. The robot drills thousands of holes for server rack stops and structural legs that carry overhead mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems.

DEWALT calls DALE "the world's first fleet-capable downward drilling robot." It runs on August Robotics' autonomous, fleet-capable platform, with fast-swap batteries, remote monitoring for around-the-clock drilling, automatic dust extraction and AI-enhanced quality assurance. August Robotics is a mobile robotics company founded in 2017.

Smaller phases explain part of the per-phase drop

The strongest fact against reading the slide as a slowdown is that the phases themselves got smaller. Holes per phase fell from 9,000 in January to about 8,750 in October, which accounts for part of the drop. Weeks saved per 10,000 holes fell as well, from about 8.9 to about 7.8, so phase size is not the whole story. DEWALT has never claimed a constant saving per phase, and cumulative weeks saved rose at every release.

If the next totals DEWALT publishes name customers beyond the pilot hyperscaler, the July commercial launch will start to show in them; the Oct 16 release names none.

In January, DALE had saved 80 weeks across 10 phases and reported 99.97% accuracy on more than 90,000 holes. By October, it had saved more than 300 weeks across 44 phases and reported "over 99%" accuracy on more than 385,000 holes.