Lucid Bots, a robotics company based in Charlotte, North Carolina, has raised $20 million in a Series B funding round. This brings the total funding to $34 million. The round was co-led by Cubit Capital and Idea Fund Partners, with additional participation from Taylor Rhodes, WaterStone Impact Fund, and Front Porch Ventures.
The company plans to use the capital to hire more staff, increase its manufacturing capacity, grow its commercial operations, and speed up its Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS) offering.
From Idea to the Job Site
Founded in 2018 by Andrew Ashur, Lucid Bots began as a cleaning contractor deliberately taking on real jobs to understand the industry from within. The inspiration came years earlier when Ashur, then a junior at Davidson College studying economics and Spanish, witnessed window washers on a swing stage slamming into a building on a windy day.
“Built infrastructure is literally the largest asset class in the world,” Ashur said, “but right now, we’ve got aging infrastructure, new infrastructure that’s getting bigger and harder to maintain, and less and less people willing and able to do the work.”
It took the company five years to ship its first 100 robots. Today, it is approaching 1,000 deployments across the United States, with 93% of new business coming from inbound interest.
Products and Platform
Lucid Bots offers two core products, the Sherpa exterior cleaning drone and the Lavo AI autonomous pressure washing robot. Both designed and manufactured in-house at its 25,000-square-foot Charlotte facility.
Its newly launched Lucid Refresh platform uses a subscription model. This gives operators access to drones, ground robots, fleet management software, training, and job intelligence tools without needing upfront capital investment.
“It’s less like buying equipment and more like adding a robotics division to your business,” said Vic Pellicano, President and Chief Platform Officer.
The Sherpa drone is reported to reduce job completion time by two to five times, with operator payback periods of under two months. The platform has collectively generated over $75 million in exterior cleaning revenue across its operator network, with customers ranging from independent contractors to large organizations including Disney and Sunbelt Rentals.
Data, AI, and Expansion
Lucid Bots distinguishes itself through operational data accumulated over hundreds of thousands of hours of real-world use. This data continuously trains the AI powering its robots, improving performance over time. The company is also a member of the NVIDIA Inception Program and is developing AI capabilities in collaboration with NVIDIA.
Beyond cleaning, the company is expanding into adjacent categories such as painting, waterproofing, and sealing; using the same hardware platform. Ashur noted the company recently waterproofed a large university stadium using the same Sherpa frame and software.
Investor Outlook
Investors cited labor shortages and growing demand for industrial automation as key drivers behind the funding decision.
“The labor crisis in industrial work is real,” said Philip Carson, Partner at Cubit Capital. “Lucid has achieved genuine innovation with technology that empowers workers and creates safer workplaces.”
Lister Delgado, Managing Partner at Idea Fund Partners, added that Lucid Bots is “defining a new category” through its AI systems trained on more real-world cleaning data than any other competitor, paired with strong unit economics and domestic manufacturing.
Ashur described the next 18 months as “transformative” for the company’s product roadmap. He noted that demand has outpaced capacity. The new funding is aimed at addressing this challenge.
