Trifo raises $15 million for its AI-powered brain robot vacuum named Lucy

As the world gets ready for CES 2020, Trifo, a full stack AI home robot startup, today announced Lucy, a smart home robot vacuum outfitted with an AI-powered brain. The AI-brain enables the robot to protect its home with advanced surveillance technology and also clean the home with one of the most powerful vacuums available.

In addition, Trifo also announced $15 million in a Series B round of funding bringing the total raise to $26 million. Series B investors include Yidu Cloud, Tsinghua AI Fund and Matrix Partners. The Series B raise will fund support for continued hardware and software development on future Trifo AI home robots, U.S. and European market expansion, and talent acquisition.

Founded in 2016 by Zhe Zhang, the Santa Clara, California-based Trifo is a full stack AI home robot startup. Focusing on indoor home environments, Trifo creates end-to-end integrated hardware/software systems with sensing, perception and decision-making capabilities. These robots help people live better lives by perceiving physics, geometry and semantics of home environments, communicating with humans in a natural way and continuously learning new skills with advanced AI technologies.

“Revenue for smart home products globally will grow to $28.4 billion in 2020, up 54% from $18.5 billion in 2018, and the feature set of these devices continues to improve,” said Zhe Zhang, Trifo’s Founder and CEO. “Lucy reflects the evolution of our products from robot vacuums to AIoT-enabled home robots that can assist with a wide range of features that help people with their life and work.”

In a recent survey of more than 500 consumers, Clutch found that smart home appliances are the connected devices people own and use the most. Two-thirds of people (67%) own a smart home appliance and 49% use smart home appliances the most compared to other connected devices.

“Trifo has quickly developed highly advanced algorithms and AI-based robotic intelligence and monetized these into commercially-viable products,” said Yicheng Li, Partner, Tsinghua AI Fund. “We are eager to support the company and Zhe’s leadership as it expands its offering into a complete ecosystem of home robots to serve a wide range of people’s needs.”

Trifo’s vision is to build a family of home robots that enhance people’s lives and let them focus on what’s important. Its first products were smart home robot vacuums and rapidly evolved into AI home robots with the introduction of Lucy. Trifo’s next innovation will include home robots that address personal needs such as personal healthcare management, home environment understanding and monitoring, and entertainment services. Look for new, exciting Trifo innovations in late-2020.

“We support Trifo’s vision for AI home robots, which goes beyond traditional cleaning capabilities,” said Rick Liang, Senior Vice President of Yidu Cloud. “With the strategic investment in Trifo, we look forward to enhancing the home robot experience into a new dimension (i.e., healthy home and consumer-level health monitoring).”