Hivebotics nets US$6M to take restroom-cleaning robot Abluo into volume production
Restrooms may not be the most glamorous frontier for robotics, but they are among the most revealing. In malls, airports, hospitals and office towers, they sit at the intersection of hygiene expectations, labour shortages and operational cost pressures. For facilities managers, they are also one of the hardest spaces to keep consistently clean. Singapore-based Hivebotics […] The post Hivebotics…
Hivebotics, a Singapore-based robotics company, has secured US$6 million in Series A funding to bring its commercial restroom-cleaning robot, Abluo, into full-scale production. Led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India, the investment is backed by Fareast Land Development, part of Farglory Group, and Rigel, an Asian manufacturer of eco-friendly restroom products.
The round will support expanding the company's distributor network across Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North America, as well as further developing HiveIntelligence, the software layer that manages cleaning jobs. Founded in 2021 by Rishab Patwari and Nguyen Tuan Dung, Hivebotics has tested Abluo in over 20 facilities, including hospitals, airport terminals, and shopping malls, logging nearly 10,000 operating hours in the past 12 months.
Unlike traditional cleaning robots that focus on floors, Abluo is designed to clean entire commercial restrooms, tackling wet, cramped, and uneven environments with fixtures, cubicles, and human traffic. Using a mobile base and an articulated arm, Abluo cleans toilets, urinals, sinks, and floors with high-pressure steam, targeted chemical jets, vacuum extraction, and blow-drying.
This approach eliminates the need for brushes or cloths that can transfer dirt and bacteria between cubicles, replacing approximately 30 minutes of manual labor with just five minutes of human inspection. The company's onboard vision system identifies fixtures, and its AI generates real-time cleaning routes, with each job ending in a scored before-and-after check for building operators to verify cleanliness standards.
This approach could provide a valuable selling point in facilities management, where cleanliness is often judged by complaints, spot checks, or subjective inspections. Hivebotics aims to showcase how robots can replace repetitive, labour-intensive tasks, improving hygiene management as a measurable service level rather than a routine effort.
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