Industry History
The Pressure-Washing Drone Started Before It Became a Startup Category
Drone cleaning did not begin with a funding announcement. Working Drones, the company behind Apellix, filed patent families in 2014 for aerial vehicles that could perform work on surfaces, including washing and cleaning. Lucid was founded in 2018, entered Y Combinator in 2019, and helped turn the idea into a visible venture-backed category. Today's market is the result of both paths.
2014
Apellix patent-family priority
Four years before Lucid's 2018 founding and five before its Y Combinator batch.
[01]
The first leap was from seeing work to doing work
Early commercial drones mostly observed: cameras, maps, inspections, and data. Cleaning required a different machine. The aircraft had to interact with a building, manage a live hose, apply liquid, hold standoff, and stay controllable while an external load moved beneath it.
Two Working Drones patent families trace priority to 2014. Their disclosures describe task-performing aerial vehicles and include washing windows and surfaces, applying water, soap, and cleaning solution, and operating with tethered systems. That is the engineering root of Apellix.
[02]
Apellix built the patent-led first wave
Apellix says it was founded in Jacksonville in 2014, received its first U.S. patents in 2018, began working with the U.S. Army in 2022, and had systems operating across five continents by 2024. Those deployment claims are manufacturer-published; the patent dates are public records.
The important point is narrower and stronger than saying one company 'invented everything': Apellix was designing and patenting aerial robots that work on buildings years before drone cleaning became a funded startup category.
[03]
Lucid built the venture-backed second wave
Lucid was founded in 2018 and joined Y Combinator's Summer 2019 batch. Founder Andrew Ashur built the company while studying at Davidson College, a nationally prominent liberal-arts school, completing a double major in three years and playing Division I baseball.
The company later raised a $9.1 million Series A and a $20 million Series B, bringing announced funding to $34 million. That capital helped scale manufacturing, subscriptions, software, support, and category visibility. It is a different route from Apellix's earlier patent-led development, not proof that the aircraft are equivalent.
[04]
Now the category is wider than two companies
ABZ Innovation has emerged as a credible European challenger with the C10. KTV approaches the market through a cleaning system and service network. Aspira, EAUAV, and a growing group of catalog manufacturers publish ambitious specifications.
The category has arrived. The buyer's work is no longer deciding whether a cleaning drone exists. It is separating tested output from brochure output, understanding hose and payload engineering, and choosing the training, support, serviceability, and work-access system around the aircraft.
Evidence [7]
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