KAMA FLOW invests 500 million rubles in ROBO

The investment company KAMA FLOW is closing a 500 million ruble deal with ROBO, a developer and operator of an autonomous robot platform for commercial cleaning. This is one of the largest rounds in Russian service robotics in 2026 and ROBO's bid for leadership in a niche that is in an active growth phase. The funds will be used for scaling, platform development and preparation for production localization.

According to the International Federation of Robotics report "Service Robots 2025", the global market for professional cleaning devices grew by 34% over the year, and the total number of units sold approached 200 thousand. In Russia, according to RoboJobs, by September 2025, there were 563 companies in the field of service robotics, which is 21.5% more than a year earlier.

The deal takes place at a time when cleaning robots are moving from test projects to the daily operation of commercial facilities. The first wave of automation showed the segment's weak spot – businesses bought equipment, but remained one-on-one with start-up, maintenance, and quality control. ROBO has closed this gap with a platform that takes responsibility for a clean square meter, organizing the operation of the park, and shows the result in numbers.

The customer works with ROBO using the Robotics-as-a-Service model. The customer pays for the service in regular payments, and the operator is responsible for implementation, work, technical support, and results. This format allows you to reduce monthly cleaning costs by 10-34%, depending on the implementation scenario.

Kirill Tishin, partner at KAMA FLOW investment company: "It is fundamentally important that ROBO is not a vendor, but a technology platform open to integration with any manufacturers, software and complementary solutions. This approach makes the company a partner for all participants in the service robotics market and opens up opportunities for many collaborations. Currently, in robotics, the greatest potential for private investment is concentrated outside the basic mechanics – in high-level software, critical components and payload, as well as in vertical product solutions, where the robot is only an element of the complex. Companies that build scalable business models with repeatable revenue through licenses, service, and SLAs, rather than one-time equipment deliveries, gain an advantage."

Ilya Merkulov, investment manager at KAMA FLOW: "Service robotics is becoming in demand in Russia amid a shortage of personnel and the desire of businesses to optimize OPEX costs by automating routine operations. ROBO operates in the cleaning segment, where robotic solutions are just beginning to be used by customers. Previously, their implementation was hindered by the high cost of the component base. Now the situation has changed: cleaning is one of the areas with the potential to form a major player. For us, investing in ROBO is supporting one of the flagships of the development of robotic cleaning in Russia. We hope for a productive partnership with the team, the deal is just the beginning."

The cleaning market is facing an extreme shortage of personnel and is approaching the limit of the manual model, experts say – in 2020-2024, the Russian segment grew 1.9 times, and the payroll of companies has doubled or tripled over the past five years. Against this background, robotics is becoming a way for businesses to maintain the quality of cleaning and manage costs without increasing staff in proportion to the area growth.

ROBO transforms the cleaning robot into a part of a controlled digital system. The platform adapts routes to different objects – shopping malls and airports with high traffic, parking lots, warehouses, schools, hospitals and sites with special security requirements. In real time, it monitors the execution of the technological map and shows uniform KPIs to the operator and the customer – area, schedule, downtime and shift quality.

According to the company, after a year of commercial operation, the coverage of the cleaning area reaches 91%, the implementation of the technological map is 83%, the payback period is 12-18 months, and the NPS of customers has increased from 10% to 63%. Today, ROBO manages a fleet of more than 90 robots, serves over 3 million square meters per month, and revenue over the past 12 months has amounted to 130 million rubles.

ROBO plans to scale this model at the expense of the founding team, which includes commercial, production and engineering expertise. Sergey Fedotkin participated in the launch of IQOS in Russia and is a co-owner of the advertising holding company RTA. Alexey Kamynin is the co–owner of the Chelyabinsk Electrical Equipment Plant, on the basis of which the company is considering the possibility of localizing the production of robots. Kirill Eremin founded a company in the field of digital instrumentation for the electric power industry.

Sergey Fedotkin, CEO of ROBO: "From day one, we weren't building a robot – we were building a complete digital service. Different navigation firmware for different objects, real-time digital cleaning control, KPIs that both the operator and the customer see – this is the platform. A Russian platform certified by the Ministry of Digital Economy, with data streams on local servers within the framework of 152-FZ. Today, we already have about six improvements to the design documentation for different manufacturers – to increase the autonomy of the fleet and the share of shifts without offline intervention by engineers. 91% of the area coverage, 83% of the technological map execution are not slides, this is what we measure on a daily basis. 500 million from KAMA FLOW will be used to develop the platform and scale what has already proven itself in combat."

By 2030, ROBO plans to put 2.5 thousand robots into commercial operation and become one of the leaders of the Russian market of service robotics. The basis for scaling is set by the economics of the project – the outflow of customers is below 5%. The next stage may be the localization of production within the framework of SPIC 2.0, a mechanism for long–term investment agreements with the state.

The KAMA FLOW round is a step for ROBO from scaling the fleet to building a vertically integrated robotics service platform. The company intends to strengthen the software part, develop its own operating standards, expand its presence at high-intensity cleaning facilities and form a market where cleaning robotics is evaluated not by the number of machines purchased, but by cost, quality and predictability of the result.

In the long term, ROBO sees the IPO as a tool to raise capital, strengthen the engineering team and reach a new level of competition in robotics.