Facility Direct or Czar Chassis

A Grid reaches a building by one of two routes, and the choice has less to do with the technology than with who signs for it. Under Facility Direct, the building subscribes to the pool itself. Under Czar Chassis, a robot vendor or systems integrator ships the same Grid under their own name, bundled with their fleet. The appliance is the same Czar either way, Substrate runs the same way, and the record stays in the building on both routes.

What does not differ between the routes

Start with what is fixed, because it is most of the picture. On both routes the pool is a set of Czar nodes in the building's own rack, joined into one Grid, serving perception, decisions, and language models to every robot on the floor over the facility network. Safety stays on each robot as its vendor shipped it. Camera feeds, captures, task records, and adapted weights stay on the operator's hardware.

The commercial form is also the same. There is one subscription for the configured Grid: hardware, platform license, and sustainment in one line, fixed for the term. Adding robots to the pool does not move that line. Posture is a choice per site on both routes, so an air-gapped Grid and a connected Grid are both available whether the building or the vendor holds the subscription. The technology page describes the pool itself; this article is only about the route.

Facility Direct: the building holds the pool

Facility Direct suits an operator that already thinks of its automation as an estate rather than as one supplier's product. The building's automation team, with its integrator and E31 Consulting engineers on site, installs the pool and connects it to the systems the site has declared. The operator names the roles that approve tasks in Agency Studio and the people who read the record.

The strongest reason to choose this route is neutrality. A pool the building holds serves robots from every vendor on equal terms. When a second vendor's humanoids arrive later, they join the same pool under the same latency discipline, and no vendor is asked to host a competitor's models. The operator holds the relationship with Element 31 directly, using the customer portal for support, billing, and signed update downloads.

Czar Chassis: the vendor ships the pool

Czar Chassis suits a vendor or integrator whose customer wants one system from one name. The vendor's fleet and the pool arrive together. The facility sees the vendor's brand, signs one agreement with the vendor, and calls the vendor for support. Underneath, Element 31 provides sustainment and attestation: the sealed and signed image, the attestation each node performs before it joins the Grid, the provenance record for every node, and the signed updates that follow.

This is not a different machine, and it is not a lighter one. A Chassis Grid is a Czar Grid. What changes is the commercial wrapper and who the facility talks to. The vendor gains a pool it did not have to build and a sustainment line it does not have to staff. The facility gains a single accountable party for the fleet and the compute that serves it. The Czar Chassis page covers the vendor side in more detail.

How a site decides

Three considerations settle it in most cases. The first is how many vendors will put robots on this floor over the life of the pool. One vendor for the foreseeable future points toward Chassis. Several vendors point toward Facility Direct, because the pool should not belong to any one of them.

The second is who the site wants to call when something goes wrong. Some operators want one number for robots and compute together, and the vendor route gives them that. Others already run a rack and a network team and prefer to hold the compute relationship themselves.

The third is who should be named in the record. On both routes the record stays in the building, but the roles that approve tasks and the people who read the record are the operator's. On a Chassis route, the operator should make sure its agreement with the vendor keeps that ownership plain rather than assumed.

Mixed estates and later changes

A large operator can run both. One facility might take a Chassis Grid with a vendor's fleet while another subscribes directly because it runs a mixed floor. Each facility has its own pool, its own posture, and its own record. The two routes do not compete inside the company; they match the shape of each building.

The route is a decision about the relationship, not about the appliance. Whichever way the Grid arrives, the floor gets one pool, every robot in the building shares it, and nothing leaves. The How to buy page sets out both routes side by side.