Lucid Bots, a robotics company from Charlotte, North Carolina, raised a $20 million Series B in March 2026 to keep up with demand for its Sherpa cleaning drone. The company builds drones and ground robots that wash windows, soft wash facades and pressure wash pavement, and it sells them to cleaning contractors rather than to homeowners. Here is what the company makes, who backed it and how the business works as of October 2026.
Who Lucid Bots is
Andrew Ashur started the company in 2018 after watching window washers on a suspended platform get knocked around by wind while he was a college student. He had no robotics background, and the business began closer to a cleaning contractor than a lab. Lucid Bots went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2020 batch and later raised a $9.1 million Series A in May 2024, led by Cubit Capital. In July 2024 it acquired Avianna, a small company working on autonomy software for drones.
Instead of humanoid demos, Lucid Bots focuses on dirty and dangerous jobs that already have paying customers, and it designs and assembles its robots in the United States.
The March 2026 funding round
The Series B was announced on March 25, 2026. Cubit Capital, which also led the Series A, co led the round with IDEA Fund Partners. Earlier backers listed by the company include Danu Ventures, Trinity West Ventures, Gratus Capital and Y Combinator. With the new money, Lucid Bots has raised roughly $34 million in total.
The stated goal is capacity. The company said it had more demo requests than it could handle and needed more staff and more production space. It also said it took about five years to ship its first 100 robots, while the installed base has since grown into the hundreds. Its own site now reports more than 400 drones in the field, more than 6,500 completed jobs, and operators in 46 US states and 23 countries.
What the robots do
Cleaning drone for windows, facades and roofs, fed by hoses from the ground. Soft wash at around 300 PSI or high pressure up to 4,500 PSI.
Swappable modules, including a window payload with its own chemical tank and a painting module for coatings.
Autonomous ground pressure washer for sidewalks, plazas and parking areas, using saved job templates.
A version assembled in Charlotte with an audited parts list for government and defense sites.
The Sherpa is the core product. The crew parks a water tank on site, typically 50 to 200 gallons, and connects hoses to the drone, so the aircraft carries spray hardware rather than a heavy load of water. The operator flies it beside the building and sprays the surface, which replaces some of the work normally done from boom lifts, scaffolding or rope access. Lucid Bots lists a flight time of about 19 minutes per battery, coverage of more than 300 square feet per minute, a working reach of about 150 feet and a payload capacity of 55 pounds.
In October 2025 the company added a painting module. With an optional power tether the drone can stay in the air continuously, and Lucid Bots says it can coat exteriors up to 160 feet high using standard airless sprayers, with sensors that hold the nozzle at a set distance from the wall.
The Lavo Bot works on the ground. It is an autonomous pressure washer that follows saved routes, and the company rates it at up to 6,000 square feet per hour with rigs up to 20 gallons per minute and 4,500 PSI. All the robots share a software layer the company calls Lucid OS, which handles over the air updates, telemetry and maintenance data.
How the business model and pricing work
Lucid Bots sells to commercial cleaning companies, facility managers and contractors. The customer owns or leases the robot, gets training, and uses it on its own jobs. On its website the company has listed a Sherpa purchase starting at $45,750, which includes the drone, controller, batteries, training and warranty, and a subscription called Refresh starting at $2,950 per month with hardware upgrades every two years. Financing is offered, and the company notes that the drone can qualify for the Section 179 tax deduction for business equipment.
Pricing for payloads, tethers and the Lavo Bot depends on configuration, so contractors should ask for a current quote rather than rely on older figures.
| Milestone | When |
|---|---|
| Company founded in Charlotte | 2018 |
| Y Combinator batch | Winter 2020 |
| Series A, $9.1 million | May 2024 |
| Avianna acquisition | July 2024 |
| Painting module launch | October 2025 |
| Series B, $20 million | March 2026 |
What has changed since the raise
Since the Series B, Lucid Bots has kept widening what a single drone platform can do. The lineup now includes the Sherpa NDAA configuration, which the company says is assembled in Charlotte and checked against the federal rules that bar certain foreign components, so it can be used on government, defense and other security sensitive sites. That opens a market that most imported cleaning drones cannot serve.
On October 1, 2026, the company announced Sherpa HighLine, a motorized pulley that mounts on a building roof and carries the weight of the cleaning hose, paying it out as the drone climbs. Lighter load on the aircraft means operators can use wider hoses at height. Lucid Bots says it used the system in late September 2026 to clean a 23 story hotel tower in Black Hawk, Colorado, at about 280 feet above ground, which it describes as the highest a cleaning drone has worked in the United States.
No new funding round had been announced as of mid October 2026. The bigger story is the shift from a window washing drone to a general purpose platform for exterior work, with cleaning, coating and painting handled by swappable payloads.
FAQ
Can homeowners buy a Lucid Bots drone?
The products are built and priced for businesses. A homeowner would normally hire a local cleaning company that operates a Sherpa rather than buy one.
Is the Sherpa drone autonomous?
Not fully. A trained pilot flies it, while sensors help hold distance from the wall and the painting module can follow an automated path for each coat. The company has said more autonomy is a goal.
How much has Lucid Bots raised?
About $34 million in total, including the $20 million Series B in March 2026 and the $9.1 million Series A in 2024.
The verdict
Lucid Bots is one of the clearer examples of robotics that earns money today. The $20 million Series B funds more production and staff for a drone that already works on real buildings, and the move into painting, coatings and government sites gives the company room to grow beyond window cleaning.
Updated October 2026: rewritten as a company explainer covering the Series B, the Sherpa and Lavo robots, pricing and later product news.
Featured photo: Simone Dinoia on Unsplash.
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