A Cincinnati startup developing a “Roomba of the sea” has raised a six-figure friends and family funding round as it looks continue product build out and customer acquisition.
Clean Earth Rovers, which is developing autonomous technology to clean plastic out of coastal waterways, has raised $100,000 in new funding. Michael Arens, co-founder and CEO, declined to name the investor but said the funds will allow Clean Earth to continue to manufacture its product in Ohio and further validate its customer acquisition hypothesis.
Clean Earth counts marinas, coastal businesses and municipalities as customers, and the company is set to make its first deployment in San Francisco likely this month. Other pilots are pending in places like Manhattan and Victoria, British Columbia.
“We're moving out of one hard phase in development to another hard phase, which is selling,” he told me in June. “But it’s exciting. We think there's a lot of potential for market traction pretty quickly.”
Arens, a Xavier University alum, founded Clean Earth Rovers in 2019 to help solve the mounting problem of ocean plastics. His team includes mostly XU and University of Cincinnati graduates, and the company was a 2022 Cincy Inno “Fire Award” winner for sustainability.
The company’s “Plastics Piranha,” an autonomous rover, works much like a Roomba but for coastal waters. It skims the surface to collect waste and debris. Clean Earth has also developed sensors that can monitor water quality and detect harmful toxins like blue-green algae or E. coli.
The friends and family round follows a series of grants and microgrants the company has received. Clean Earth was the first non-UC-affiliated team to participate in the Venture Lab pre-accelerator, housed at the 1819 Innovation Hub and received funding through the program. Clean Earth has also received financial support from organizations like I-Corps@Ohio, a statewide program for faculty and graduate students from Ohio universities and colleges, and 10% for the ocean, a venture philanthropy for ocean conservation efforts.
Arens said the company’s home base in Cincinnati is strategic in terms of location and logistics. It can ship its product to different parts of the country for a lower cost than if it were located on either coast.
In terms of overall impact, if Clean Earth Rovers hits its obtainable market, the company anticipates it could intercept 15% of U.S. annual plastic waste for reuse.
