Lucid Bots has closed a $20 million Series B to scale manufacturing of its Sherpa cleaning drone, which is now deployed across more than 400 commercial operators in 40 states. The round was co-led by Cubit Capital and Idea Fund Partners, bringing total funding to $34 million.
The Charlotte, North Carolina company makes the Sherpa — a hexacopter built for exterior building cleaning — and the Lavo ground robot. Operators using the platform have generated more than $75 million in cleaning services revenue, according to the company. The capital will go toward headcount and production capacity to address a backlog the company says it can’t clear fast enough.
The Product
The Sherpa runs on six motors delivering up to 26.5 lbs of thrust each, built on a stainless steel and aluminum airframe rated IPX5 for water resistance. On battery, it flies up to 19 minutes and covers more than 300 square feet per minute — roughly 5,700 square feet per flight. It can operate untethered up to 400 feet, or tethered to a ground hose at a FAA-capped 140 feet.
Lucid recently demonstrated a power tether configuration that kept the Sherpa airborne for over an hour of continuous cleaning at 3,500 PSI, which eliminates the battery swap cycle that interrupts standard drone cleaning operations. The system handles wind up to 18 mph and a high-pressure sprayer rated to 4,500 PSI, though 300 PSI is the recommended setting for window work.
Pricing starts at $2,500 per month through the company’s Refresh subscription. FAA Part 107 certification is required for commercial operation.
How They Got Here
Lucid Bots launched in 2018 not as a drone company but as a cleaning contractor. CEO Andrew Ashur has been direct about the logic: understand the industry before building the product. That included, by his own account, cleaning chemical burns. The company shipped its first 100 units over five years. It’s now approaching 1,000.
That trajectory matters because it reflects genuine product-market fit rather than a sales cycle built on demo days. The company has operators running dirty equipment on profitable routes across 40 states — the kind of deployment base that’s difficult to manufacture artificially.
Beyond Windows
Lucid is expanding the Sherpa’s tool attachment system into painting, waterproofing, and sealing — applications the customer base pulled the company toward before any formal marketing effort. Ashur said the company was fielding around 50 inbound leads per month on painting and coating work before it started promoting those services, using the same frame and control system as the window cleaning configuration.
The underlying model is full-stack: hardware, software, and operational data developed in-house, with field data feeding back into product development. The question now is whether the Series B gives the manufacturing side enough runway to keep pace with the demand the operator network is generating.
