Swiss startup SolidWatts has secured 1.8 million CHF in Seed funding to accelerate the development and market entry of its innovative industrial process heating technology. The round saw continued commitment from existing investors Evercurious VC, Kickfund and Axel Carbon Capital, while welcoming a new cohort of backers including Uni.Fund, Investing for Purpose, Loggerhead Ventures, Almanac Ventures and a group of angel investors.
SolidWatts is on a mission to revolutionise industrial heating. Its proprietary, cutting-edge solid-state Radio Frequency (RF) platform delivers high power dielectric heating at efficiencies and scale that make it a direct replacement for traditional fossil fuel-based processes – for the first time.
With a focus on sustainability and energy efficiency, and with support from the Swiss Climate Foundation, the company is dedicated to helping power-hungry industries transition to clean, electrified, solutions. Applicable to traditional industries and emerging ones, SolidWatts’ technology enables energy-intensive industries, such as chemical and pharmaceutical, food processing, carbon capture and advanced recycling. SolidWatts’ platform enables these sectors to electrify their processes, cutting both energy consumption and CO₂ emissions, improving overall efficiency.
Much like a domestic microwave oven, SolidWatts’ technology creates electromagnetic waves to heat materials from the inside – a process known as dielectric heating. Unlike traditional heating methods using boilers, ovens and furnaces, SolidWatts’ technology is highly efficient, directly converting 80% or more of the electricity into RF heating power, with minimal energy lost to
surrounding infrastructure. And because the system is solid-state, maintenance and service requirements are low and uptime is high.
“This investment is a tremendous endorsement of our mission to transform how industry consumes energy and allows us to bring RF technology to the power levels and efficiencies that industry actually needs,” said Dr. Markus Aicheler, Founder and CTO of SolidWatts. “Industrial process heating accounts for around 20% of global energy demand and roughly 10% of worldwide CO₂ emissions – yet it remains one of the hardest sectors to decarbonise. As global energy demand rises alongside the AI boom, improving efficiency becomes essential.”
Electrifying even 1% of these processes with SolidWatts’ technology could eliminate 36 million tonnes of CO₂ each year – the equivalent of removing 7.8 million cars from the road.
SolidWatts was founded in November 2022. Five years ago, when geopolitical tensions exposed the fragility of global energy supply, Dr. Aicheler – a former post-doctoral Fellow at CERN – drew inspiration from CERN’s pioneering use of high-power solid-state RF technology. While CERN leverages this technology for scientific applications, Dr. Aicheler saw the potential for high-power RF to displace fossil fuels in industry.
This seed funding will be used to scale SolidWatts’ platform to higher power levels and to conduct pilots with industrial partners and clients actively seeking to reduce their energy consumption and expenditure by electrifying heating processes.
Dr. George Georgiadis, Partner at Evercurious VC, representing the investment group: “SolidWatts powers the future of industrial resilience. Their technology drives efficiency and provides a clear path away from fossil fuel dependency. This investment reflects our mission to back European hard-tech champions that solve real-world problems. We are scaling an innovator born in Europe and built for the world.”
For more information about SolidWatts’ mission and technology, visit solidwatts.ch.