Monarch Tractor’s downfall ended with its acquisition by Caterpillar.

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

The acquisition, first reported by Bloomberg, caps a difficult few years for Monarch as it suffered multiple layoffs, was sued by three different dealers and lost its main contract manufacturing partner in Foxconn. It also comes just weeks after co-founder and wine scion Carlo Mondavi said he was “kicked out” because he disagreed with CEO Praveen Penmetsa’s software-oriented approach.

Mondavi could not immediately be reached for comment. Penmetsa declined to comment on the statement Monarch released last week. The statement said its technology had been acquired by an unspecified “large global equipment manufacturer.” Caterpillar did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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

Monarch initially began building compact tractors at its own facility in Livermore, California, but eventually became one of four companies that partnered with Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn to occupy the former General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio.

Foxconn planned to build vehicles for EV startups Fisker, Lordstown Motors, and IndiEV, as well as tractors for Monarch. However, Foxconn only built a few electric trucks for Lordstown Motors (from which it acquired the plant) before the company went bankrupt. Fisker and IndiEV also went bankrupt before Foxconn could build those companies’ future vehicles at its plants. Foxconn used to make hundreds of Monarch tractors at the plant, but the electronics giant sold the plant to SoftBank in August 2025, leaving Monarch without a manufacturer.

At that point, Monarch was already struggling. It closed a $133 million funding round in early 2024 after laying off employees. Just a few months later, it said it was restructuring to lay off more employees and focus on software and licensing autonomous technology.

Dealers who bought Monarch tractors claimed the company’s autonomous technology didn’t work properly from the start. One dealer who sued Monarch in September 2025 said the tractors were “defective” and “unable to operate autonomously.” (Monarch denied these claims 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 began its mission as an alternative to Chapter 7 bankruptcy for the benefit of its creditors.

Mondavi spoke about his departure last month in a comment on an Instagram post from a farmer who complained about Monarch’s tractors. The winemaker wrote that he left “a little over a year ago due to fundamental differences in approach” after seeing “reliability issues” with Monarch tractors on his own farm and those of friends.

“I wanted to solve this problem through hardware changes, and the CEO believed that more problems could be solved through software. I was a firm believer in another path, but I ended up getting stuck and pushed out with another co-founder,” he wrote.

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