Andrew Ashur is the founder and CEO of Lucid Bots, 2024’s fastest-growing robotics manufacturer according to Inc. 5000. Lucid builds modular drones and robots that clean, paint, and coat infrastructure anywhere from 8 to 20 times faster than traditional methods. Some examples of applications include washing windows, painting bridges, or cleaning stadium domes. Fulfilling tasks like these helps mitigate one of the biggest risks on many job sites, which is people working at significant heights. And Lucid’s “LEGO-like” platform of brains, frames, and payloads enables rapid innovation, with all technology engineered and manufactured in Charlotte, NC.
Andrew built Lucid Bots with the same relentless competitive spirit that saw him graduate from Davidson College in just three years with a double major, while playing Division I baseball and working three jobs. Beyond the world of robotics, he is dedicated to scaling human impact. He co-founded Persto with his wife, Ana-Clara, to empower mentorship communities and serves as an Innovator in Residence at Davidson College’s Hurt Hub to champion the next generation of entrepreneurial builders.
1.) What is in your pockets?
Nothing at the moment.
2.) What exciting thing has happened recently for you or your organization?
We just closed on our Series B round. Last year was big for R&D investment. We’re now transitioning into production with many new features. The nearest term one is a power tether that will give our cleaning drone customers unlimited flight time. We’ve got nearly $1 million in pre-orders, and it is set to go into production in Q2.
We also hit major autonomy milestones with our ground-based robot, the Lavo, which does autonomous pressure washing. We shipped our first several autonomous Lavos in February and are starting to get really good feedback from the early adopters.
Beyond that, we’ve now built a new payload that allows us to coat and paint different types of built infrastructure, which is also set to go into production in Q2. The new payload attaches to the existing frame and brain [of the] Sherpa cleaning drone, using the same core technology, which is a meaningful TAM expansion for us and for our customers.
This is the manifestation of our product vision. We started with the cleaning drone platform but are building modularity across the brain frames and tool layers. What we have built is this universal brain that works across any robotic body. Today we’ve got both the industrial drone body and our ground-based robot body.
When we design these bodies, the whole focus is on how we make them adaptable both mechanically and electrically so that we can attach to it any kind of tool, with each tool unlocking a new multibillion-dollar market. Cleaning is where we have been; coating and painting is where we are going next. The whole vision has been to keep adding tools to the library and expanding the overall market opportunity with the frame and brain infrastructure.
3.) What is your favorite coffee spot?
Summit Coffee. It’s the one I went to most frequently when I was at Davidson College. It’s also run by a Davidson graduate.
4.) What keeps you up at night?
First, how do we capitalize this business to recognize its full potential? What we see is the company that builds modular drones and robots, manufactures in the US, and truly gets physical AI working on its platform. That’s a recipe to build one of the most valuable companies in the world. The beauty of how we built the business is that we’re highly capital efficient, making good revenue, and on a growth curve. We don’t need to raise more money to keep growing. However, capitalizing the business and effectively scaling it is what’s going to allow us to reach our end vision more quickly and efficiently.
Second, you need to reinvent yourself in certain ways during each chapter of your business. The problems going from 0 to $1 million in sales are different from $1 million to $10 million, and they are definitely different from $10 million to $100 million. How do we go from a company that is doing five- or six-figure deals to one that does seven- and eight-figure deals in terms of product and overall company positioning?
Third, how do we get to full-scale autonomy faster? When the book is written on Lucid Bots, there will be two chapters: who we were before we automated our drones and robots, and who we became after they were automated. Autonomy means higher ROI for customers and larger deal sizes for us, and then the world gets much brighter and more beautiful.
5.) What’s your favorite restaurant or happy hour?
Harvest Artisan Café in Huntersville. They have the best breakfast burrito for me and açai bowl for my two young daughters. We got to know the owners, and it is a great family spot for us.
6.) What is next for you or your organization?
One of our core priorities for 2026 is what we call Lucid Refresh, which is a robot-as-a-service model. We are evolving the way we package our product from being a standard capex sale to offering this all-inclusive service that bundles the hardware, software, and support into one digestible monthly price for customers. The goal is to lower the barriers to adoption so that we are accessible to more people, and our enterprise customers can scale more efficiently without the same capex headache.
Beyond that, it’s execution of the product vision regarding drones that clean buildings to the company that delivers the modular drone and robotics vision with the power tether that coats and paints payload, along with the addition of the autonomous Lavo, so that ultimately Lucid Bots’s revenue profile can grow in size and diversity.
