Let’s face it—doing laundry is no one’s favorite chore. It’s time-consuming, repetitive, and easy to put off. That’s exactly why a new wave of startups is stepping in, aiming to make clean clothes as simple as tapping a button. And investors are paying close attention.
Newer players like NoScrubs, and more seasoned names like Rinse, are shaking up the laundry and dry cleaning space with fresh funding and tech-powered convenience. Their mission? Eliminate laundry from your to-do list.
NoScrubs Raises $2M to Reinvent Laundry in Austin
Founded just 11 months ago, NoScrubs has secured a $2 million pre-seed round led by Initialized Capital, with participation from Frontier Venture Capital. The Austin-based startup offers an on-demand laundry pickup and delivery service, designed for speed and affordability.
CEO Matt O’Connor, a former early Instacart employee, launched the idea after struggling with slow, expensive laundry services. With co-founder and CTO Sudhanshu Gautam, he set out to build a faster alternative. According to O’Connor, folded laundry can be returned within hours of pickup, and customers can choose either a subscription or pay-as-you-go option.
So far, the service is limited to Austin, where it’s rapidly approaching 1,000 unique customers. Instead of owning facilities, NoScrubs partners with vetted laundromats and laundry rooms inside apartment complexes. This allows the team to scale more flexibly while keeping overhead low. They’ve already mapped out plans to expand across Texas and the wider U.S. by the end of 2026.
Rinse Secures $23M Series D to Expand National Footprint
San Francisco-based Rinse has been in the laundry game much longer. Founded in 2013 by Ajay Prakash, Sam Cheng, and James Joun, the company just closed a $23 million Series D round led by LG Electronics. To date, Rinse has raised more than $70 million in venture funding.
Rinse brands itself as the “Uber of laundry,” offering a mix of dry cleaning and standard laundry services. It operates in multiple major cities and promises next-day turnaround for an added fee. The standard delivery takes three to four days. A key part of Rinse’s appeal is that it employs its workers, rather than relying on gig economy contractors.
The startup has already processed over 100 million garments and now serves both individual consumers and commercial clients like cafes, spas, and property managers. Looking ahead, Rinse plans to acquire and rebrand local laundromats as part of its offline expansion strategy.
How These Startups Differ—and Where They’re Headed
Although both startups offer convenience-focused laundry services, their approaches are distinctly different. NoScrubs leans on a decentralized model that uses existing infrastructure, giving it agility and better margins. Rinse, on the other hand, blends digital convenience with physical infrastructure as it scales both B2C and B2B offerings.
NoScrubs currently employs a lean team of 13. Rinse, meanwhile, has built a more robust workforce with around 600 delivery valets and 100 operations and HQ staff.
Investors Are Betting on Convenience and Scale
For Initialized Capital Partner Zoe Perret, NoScrubs’ model is appealing because it doesn’t require massive infrastructure to grow. “They’re tapping into underused machines in laundromats and apartments, which makes scaling much easier,” she said. “Even at this early stage, the Austin numbers show this can work in other cities.”
LG is already helping to promote its investment by bundling Rinse’s services with washer and dryer sales—a strategic move in a market valued at $15.75 billion in 2024, according to recent estimates.
But not all laundry tech startups have been as fortunate. Washio, once a high-profile player, folded in 2016. Rinse acquired its remnants. Others like Prim, backed by Y Combinator, shut down operations as early as 2014.
Still, with customer demand rising for time-saving home services, and with tech powering smarter logistics, laundry startups may finally have their moment. If NoScrubs and Rinse continue to hit their goals, clean clothes could become one less thing to worry about.
