Singapore-based autonomous robot builder Hivebotics has raised $6 million in a Series A round led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India, to move its restroom-cleaning robot from pilot deployments into volume production.

In a statement on Friday, Vertex Ventures said Fareast Land Development, part of Taiwan’s Farglory Group, and Rigel, an Asian maker of smart restroom products, also joined the round. The capital will fund production of the robot, called Abluo, expand its distributor network across four core markets and further develop its AI software layer, HiveIntelligence.

Abluo is a mobile robot with an articulated arm that cleans a full commercial restroom, such as toilets, urinals, sinks, and floors, rather than only the floor, as existing cleaning robots do. It cleans without contact, using high-pressure steam, a targeted chemical jet, vacuum extraction, and blow-drying, with onboard cameras identifying each fixture and software planning the cleaning route in real time.

Abluo has logged nearly 10,000 operating hours over 12 months across more than 20 sites in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North America, including hospitals, airport terminals, and shopping malls. The robot cleans to the same standard each cycle, replacing about 30 minutes of manual work with a five-minute human inspection.

Co-founder and Chief Executive Rishab Patwari said teams of robots would take on most repetitive facility work within three years. Chan Yip Pang, an investment executive director at Vertex, said demand for cleaning was non-discretionary while the workforce aged and wage floors rose, leaving operators needing to hold hygiene standards without adding staff they could not find.

Hivebotics was founded in 2021 as a spinoff from the National University of Singapore by Patwari and Nguyen Tuan Dung. It launched Abluo commercially in 2024.

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