- The sanitation robotics firm is targeting a listing within months after scaling operations across 50 cities
- SoftBank China Capital-backed Coowa has built a fleet of over 10,000 robots and turned profitable
Coowa (酷哇科技), an autonomous sweeper and mobile robots manufacturer, is preparing for a Hong Kong IPO after completing a late-stage financing round that pushed its valuation above $3 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Shanghai-based company, backed by investors including Infinity Capital and SoftBank China Capital, recently closed an undisclosed private funding round of more than $600 million.
It plans to file its listing application within the next two to three months, sources said. Huatai Securities and Deutsche Bank are acting as joint sponsors on the proposed listing.
Founded in 2015, Coowa initially focused on autonomous driving technology before shifting its core business toward smart sanitation robots for municipal services.
45 million km of real-world data
The company has built a portfolio of urban cleaning machines covering multiple road scenarios, including a one-ton “Unicorn” series and a three-ton “Kylin” autonomous sweeping vehicle lineup.
To date, Coowa has operated in more than 50 cities globally, mostly in China, with its fleet accumulating over 45 million kilometers of real-world driving and operating data.
Its autonomous fleet exceeds 10,000 units, while total contracts in hand surpass 5 billion yuan ($738 million).
In large-scale deployments involving more than 10 robots per contract, Coowa is estimated to hold around 80% market share, according to industry data, making it one of the most established operators in the segment.
Nearly half of its clients now come from enterprise and municipal customers, including major environmental services groups such as Beijing Enterprises Group, Infore Environment and Yuhetian Group.
A recent 90-million-yuan unmanned sanitation leasing project in Zhangzhou, Fujian, highlights a shift toward service-based procurement, where local state-owned enterprises pay monthly fees instead of purchasing equipment outright.
One of the few profitable players
Coowa has built three main business lines: smart mobility, smart property services and smart city management.
Its operations now span first-tier cities Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, where its on-site urban services share has grown from under 2% in 2022 to 25% in 2025.
On the technology side, the company launched its first interactive world model called CooWAIM 2.0, trained on large-scale real-world datasets to enable cross-scenario deployment of urban robots with lower costs and faster scaling.
The company reported revenue above 1 billion yuan in 2025 and has already reached positive EBITDA, making it one of the few profitable players in the sector.
Despite its progress, challenges remain. More than 90% of Coowa’s contracts are still domestic, leaving its ability to replicate profitability overseas untested.
Investors in Hong Kong will also need to assess how to value its fleet of tens of thousands of sweeping robots and tens of millions of kilometers of operational data as a core asset base.
