MaHui Spotlight | MaHui Member Starmax Closes Over RMB 500 Million Series A, Existing Shareholder Source Code Capital Increases Stake

36Kr has learned that pool robot company Starmax has completed its Series A funding round, led jointly by Cathay Capital, Monolith, and Anker, with follow-on investment from angel-round backers Source Code Capital, Shunwei Capital, Hillhouse, Yunmu Capital, Wuzhong Financial Holding, and Professor Bingqiang Gao. The company has raised more than 500 million yuan in total funding to date. Proceeds from this round will primarily go toward product R&D, talent recruitment, and market expansion.

Pool cleaning tools may seem like a niche category in China, but overseas they represent a massive market.

There are over 28 million private pools worldwide, with roughly 500,000 to 700,000 new above-ground and in-ground pools added each year — creating substantial maintenance and upgrade demand across both existing and new installations. Yet 40% of pool owners globally still clean their pools manually, and only 23% use pool robots, most of which are entry-level products. (Data compiled from UN statistics and Maytronics financial reports.)

During peak season, pools may need cleaning several times per week. In Europe and the US, professional pool cleaning is expensive and appointments are hard to book. According to Lawnstarter, owners spend an average of $5,000–$6,000 annually on pool maintenance, covering regular cleaning, repairs, utilities, and seasonal opening and closing.

While the pool robot industry is highly concentrated in terms of brand share, it remains dominated by international players. The leading incumbents have chronically underinvested in product innovation, resulting in minimal functional differentiation and low intelligence levels.

With the pool cleaning robot market clearly a blue ocean, Chinese manufacturers led by Starmax have moved quickly to seize the commercial opportunity.

36Kr understands that Starmax launched its first-generation products in February this year: the Beatbot AquaSense Pro and Beatbot AquaSense, priced at $2,199 and $1,299 respectively. The two products have generated hundreds of millions of yuan in sales over the past six months and captured 85% of the premium segment — products priced at $1,400 and above — in Amazon's pool cleaning category.

Most new entrants to the pool robot space are targeting the low-to-mid-end market. On Amazon, budget pool cleaning robots typically cluster in the $150–$200 range, mid-range products fall between $399 and $600, and the thousand-dollar-plus tier is occupied by only two brands: Starmax's Beatbot and Israeli brand Dolphin.

In the view of Starmax founder Shengle Wang, the company's first-generation pool cleaning robot delivers genuinely disruptive innovation for the industry, thoroughly identifying user pain points and solving them.

Take the Beatbot AquaSense Pro as an example. The product features Starmax's proprietary intelligent buoyancy control system, enabling comprehensive 3D cleaning of the water surface, pool floor, walls, and waterline. It has water quality management capabilities, dynamically and evenly dispensing chemicals during cleaning with automatic dosage adjustment based on pool size. It uses self-developed mapping, localization, and navigation algorithms to achieve 100% cleaning coverage while improving efficiency, with cleaning maps and logs visualized through a mobile app.

Starmax's first-generation products mark significant improvements in intelligence, mobility, cleaning performance, and ease of use. The team replaced brushed motors with self-developed brushless motors, substantially enhancing control precision and battery life.

Following this funding round, Starmax plans to expand into Europe, Australia, South America, and the Middle East through a combined online and offline approach.