Hivebotics raises $6M Series A led by Vertex Ventures SEA & India for autonomous restroom robots

Hivebotics Raises $6M Series A

Singapore-based robotics startup Hivebotics has raised a $6 million Series A round led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India. The round also included participation from Fareast Land Development and Rigel.

What Hivebotics Does

Founded in 2021 as a spin-off from the National University of Singapore by Rishab Patwari and Nguyen Tuan Dung, Hivebotics builds autonomous robots for commercial cleaning. Its flagship product, Abluo, is an autonomous robot equipped with an articulated arm that cleans entire commercial restrooms — toilets, urinals, sinks and floors — without contact.

The system uses high-pressure steam, targeted chemical jets, vacuum extraction and blow-drying to complete its tasks. Onboard cameras identify fixtures, while the company's proprietary HiveIntelligence AI layer plans, monitors and validates each job in real time.

Commercial Traction

Abluo launched commercially in 2024. According to the company, the robot has logged approximately 10,000 operating hours across more than 20 sites in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North America. Deployments include hospitals, airport terminals and shopping malls.

The Round

• Round type: Series A
• Amount: $6,000,000
• Lead investor: Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India
• Additional investors: Fareast Land Development, Rigel
• Announced: September 4, 2026

Why It Matters

The funding comes as commercial cleaning operators face persistent labor shortages and rising expectations around hygiene and consistency. Hivebotics' approach targets a specific, high-frequency task — restroom cleaning — with a contact-free robotic system that combines hardware and an AI software layer for job planning and validation.

The company's existing footprint across four regions and multiple facility types suggests early validation beyond its home market in Singapore. The Series A capital positions Hivebotics to scale deployments and continue developing its Abluo platform and HiveIntelligence software.

For acquisition watchers, Hivebotics sits at the intersection of robotics hardware, facility services software and commercial cleaning — a combination that could interest strategic buyers in facilities management, building services or robotics platforms looking to add autonomous restroom cleaning capability with an existing multi-region deployment base.