Autonomous cleaning robotics company Thoro.ai, a late 2020 spin-out from Carnegie Robotics LLC and made in partnership with cleaning equipment company Nilfisk, appointed Patrick Mondi to serve as its newest CEO.
Mondi joins the Pittsburgh-based company following prior experience working as the global head of supply chain, logistics and workplace at Lime, a San Francisco-based transportation company that provides electric bikes and scooters for rent. Before that, Mondi worked on business development and strategic initiatives for Uber's self-driving unit, Pittsburgh-based Uber ATG, before it was acquired by Aurora Innovation Inc.
Mondi said he's excited to get to work and expand the commercialization efforts of Thoro.
"We have an autonomy stack that's ripe and ready to scale and we're really focused on commercializing it, deploying it at scale," Mondi said. "A lot of my prior experience dealt with supporting increased operations at scale, and a lot of what my teams and I did at Lime was directly related to that. That is what I'm most excited about at Thoro and what our team is really focused on."
Mondi said that focus includes taking its technology and offering it to customers where it makes the most sense to replace repetitive tasks with an autonomous component. In spring 2020, the company deployed its autonomous cleaning robots it made with Nilfisk at Pittsburgh International Airport, which became the first airport in the nation to have to use ultraviolet light on cleaning robots. Those same cleaning robots are also now scrubbing the halls of numerous local high schools as well as at PPG Paints Arena, Mondi said.
Thoro employs 11 workers so far, though Mondi said efforts are "ramping up" to add more over the next few months. He declined to disclose revenue figures.
