Hivebotics, a Singapore robotics company, said on 4 September 2026 that it had closed a $6m Series A led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India.
Fareast Land Development, part of Farglory Group, and Rigel, an Asian maker of restroom products, also invested. The valuation was not disclosed.
“Restroom cleaning is one of the few labour markets where demand is non-discretionary and supply keeps tightening.”Chan Yip Pang, Executive Director, Investment, Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India
What Hivebotics does
Hivebotics makes Abluo, a mobile robot with an articulated arm that cleans an entire commercial restroom, including toilets, urinals, sinks and floors. The company says most existing cleaning robots only clean floors.
Abluo does not touch the surfaces it cleans. It uses high-pressure steam, a targeted chemical spray, vacuum extraction and blow-drying, and its arm reaches under rims and around fixtures. Cameras on the robot identify each fixture, software plans the cleaning route in real time, and each job ends with a scored before-and-after check so that operators can audit the result. The company says brushes and cloths can spread contamination from one cubicle to the next, which is why it avoids them.
According to the company, Abluo has logged nearly 10,000 operating hours over 12 months at more than 20 sites in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North America, including hospitals, airport terminals and shopping malls. It says the robot replaces around 30 minutes of manual cleaning with a five-minute inspection by a person.
Rishab Patwari and Nguyen Tuan Dung founded Hivebotics in 2021 as a spin-off from the National University of Singapore. Patwari is chief executive. Vincent Sim, who previously ran Kärcher's business in Singapore, joined as chief sales officer in 2025.
What the money is for
The company will use the funding to move Abluo from pilot deployments into volume production, to grow its network of distributors across its four core markets, and to keep developing HiveIntelligence, its software that plans, monitors and checks each cleaning job. It did not name the four markets.
Why investors are backing cleaning robots
The release cited Grand View Research estimates that soft facilities management, which covers cleaning, security, catering and similar services, was worth $770bn globally in 2024 and could reach $1.23tn by 2033. It also cited Kimberly-Clark figures putting annual turnover among janitorial staff at 200% to 400%.
Chan Yip Pang, executive director for investment at Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India, said that in Hivebotics' main markets the cleaning workforce was getting older and minimum wages were rising, leaving operators struggling to maintain hygiene standards without more staff. He said Vertex was backing the team to take the business from Singapore into other regions.
Patwari said the company had started with restrooms because they were the hardest part of a building to automate, and that he expected teams of robots to do most of the repetitive work of running a facility within three years. He said the timing was right because labour was scarce, physical AI was improving and hardware was getting cheaper.
The release did not mention any earlier funding.
Company website: hivebotics.tech