Window-Washing Drones Raise $20M as Demand Soars

While some robotics companies chase headlines with dancing robots, one North Carolina startup is too busy making money by cleaning windows with drones.

Lucid Bots just raised $20 million to keep up with overwhelming demand for its window-washing drones. The Charlotte-based company has more people requesting demos than hours in the day.

CEO Andrew Ashur got the idea as a college student when he watched terrified window washers being slammed against a building on a windy day. He thought there had to be a safer way.

That moment in 2018 launched a company that now sells nearly 1,000 robots to cleaning companies across America. The drones tackle dangerous jobs like washing windows on skyscrapers and waterproofing massive stadiums.

The journey wasn't easy. It took Lucid Bots five years to sell its first 100 units, partly because investors were skeptical of a founder with a liberal arts degree and zero robotics experience.

Ashur spent two years actually working as a window cleaner, enduring chemical burns and learning exactly what the industry needed. That dirt-under-the-fingernails approach paid off.

The company designs and manufactures everything in the United States. They've grown so fast they're running out of parking spaces at their facility.

The Ripple Effect

Lucid Bots is solving three major problems at once. America's infrastructure is aging and new buildings are getting harder to maintain, but fewer people want to do dangerous maintenance work.

The robots collect data that makes them smarter with every job. That same technology now helps with painting, waterproofing, and sealing work too.

Customers started asking if the drones could handle these adjacent tasks. Now Lucid Bots receives about 50 requests monthly for painting and coating jobs, even before they formally marketed that service.

The company recently waterproofed an entire university stadium using the same drone that cleans windows. Each new application opens doors to keep buildings safer and maintenance workers out of harm's way.

Technology is finally making one of the world's most dangerous jobs safer, one window at a time.