Cleaning the exterior of buildings is a dirty and dangerous job. Lucid Bots launched its Sherpa drone line in 2018 to clean windows in high-altitude locations, and now it’s back to take on more labor-intensive tasks.
The Charlotte, North Carolina-based company, which was part of Y Combinator’s 2019 cohort, took on a new form as a robotics company with the goal of building intelligent robots specifically designed to do the “dirty” jobs to do that people don’t do “I want to do it,” Ashur said.
“We started with a very simple problem and over the years we have tried to make a dangerous job safer. “The real problem we’re solving is the fundamental fact that people don’t want to do jobs that are considered boring, dirty, dangerous or demeaning,” Andrew Ashur, founder and CEO of Lucid Bots, told TechCrunch.
Customers also repeatedly asked the company whether its drones could clean flat surfaces such as sidewalks and driveways in addition to the building facade, windows and roof.
“We had this reverse problem where people told us, ‘If you build this, we’ll pay you for it,'” Ashur said. “As you can imagine with a flying object, a flat surface and gravity are not exactly friendly.”
Getting a robot to do this was actually easier than Ashur thought. Lucid Bots had the same physique and brain as its robots. All that was missing was attaching different tools or payloads to the robots so that they could carry out different tasks. Well, and a few wheels. Voila: a robot that can clean a flat surface. It’s called Lavo Bot, a high-pressure washing robot.
Drones are an industry where some big players…fly in. Amazon has a ban on delivery drones, even though the company will no longer deliver in California. Google and DoorDash also tried to get involved. In addition, all drones are used for aerospace and military purposes. In addition to Lucid Bots, some lesser-known companies such as Apellix, Prichard Industries and KTV also have cleaning drones. Ashur’s goal isn’t necessarily to compete with companies like Amazon — the focus is not on delivery, but rather on “developing cutting-edge technology for old-school industries,” he said.
Ashur believes Lucid Bots has an advantage because cleaning drones fly within regulations in urban and suburban environments, spaces where delivery drones can’t even be tested today, Ashur said.
Last year, Lucid Bots ran a proof of concept in which a customer paid for two delivery drones of a certain size – a 20-pound payload-lifting delivery drone that can fly 10 kilometers autonomously. Lucid Bots examined its core tech stack and product strategy and found that the company could implement this in less than a month. In fact, the company did this within four days, Ashur said.
“We’re kind of an outlier in the robotics landscape,” Ashur said. “We generate significant revenue. We have years of growth behind us. We also have access to this unique data set on how to fly in these environments where most drones cannot fly today, which creates great long-term value for us.”
The Lava Bot from Lucid Bot for pressure washing. (Image credit: Lucid Bots)
Meanwhile, Lucid Bots generated just over $3.5 million in revenue in 2023. Ashur said the company “has been on an exponential rise over the last three years, and I plan to stay with it for as long as possible.”
Now the company wants to further develop its autonomous robotics portfolio, scale operations and leverage its AI-driven software and sensor platform to expand into new markets. This comes with new Series A funding of $9.1 million.
It was “very interesting” to raise funds for a frontier tech company, particularly based in Charlotte, Ashur said. There was often a disconnect between investors who didn’t understand the space or vision of what Lucid Bots was working towards. That’s not the case with Cubit Capital, he said.
Cubit Capital led the round and was supported by Idea Fund Partners, Danu Venture Group and existing investors including Y Combinator’s Growth Fund and Gratus Capital.
Philip Carson of Cubit Capital said in a written statement that Lucid Bots was able to achieve something “unheard of in the cleaning robotics industry”: bring products to market quickly and cost-effectively.
“Lucid Bots has developed a model where building a drone domestically costs less than shipping a drone from a manufacturer abroad,” Carson said. “These differentiated capabilities, combined with strong revenue growth and a proven team, give us great confidence in their ability to win in this exciting, growing market.”