#53 Quilt
Making heat pumps cool
Read time: 5 minutes
Hi, I’m Javi Gascón.
This is Climate Tech Distillery, a newsletter where I talk about one specific climate tech company every week.
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Today we’ll distill a company that’s revolutionizing home climate with the most efficient, smart and design-forward heat pumps: Quilt 🇺🇸
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What Problem Does Quilt Tackle❓
Quilt deals with the environmental and health impacts associated with traditional heating systems. Here’s why we don’t like them:
1. Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Traditional heating systems, such as those using gas and oil boilers, release CO2, nitrogen oxides (NOx), and sulfur dioxide (SO2), which are major contributors to climate change.
2. Air Pollution: They also emit pollutants that degrade air quality and harm human health. This includes particulate matter, hydrocarbons, and other harmful substances that cause respiratory issues.
3. Energy Efficiency and Resource Usage: Traditional heating systems often have low efficiency and rely on fossil fuels, leading to high energy consumption and resource depletion. Coal-fired heating systems have particularly high emissions and low efficiency.
4. Health Impacts: Heating systems, especially those using solid fuels like coal and wood, are linked to significant health issues, with up to 40-60% of total deaths in some regions attributed to emissions from these systems.
Product / Service 📦
Quilt creates heat pumps that are super easy to purchase, install and use. Oh, and they have a very sexy design.
Heat pumps are by far the best way to heat and cool your home and they work by transferring heat from one place to another using refrigerant and a compressor. More details here.
What makes Quilt stand out?
Quiet Operation: The outdoor unit operates at 36 to 55 dBA, which is quieter than rainfall.
Energy Savings: As a ductless system, Quilt avoids the 20-30% energy loss typically associated with ducted systems.
Smart Features: Quilt uses millimeter wave technology for occupancy detection and advanced algorithms for optimized temperature control. It’s also very intuitive to use thanks to the Quilt app.
Design: The sleek design looks closer to art than AC unit. It’s customizable so it can blend with home decor.
Performance and Sustainability: It’s extremely efficient even with a full heating capacity down to -5°F and use a very energy-efficient refrigerant (R-32).
User Experience: They have an e-commerce-like checkout, a super low lift install experience and ongoing support. All rare to see in heat pump companies.
Market 🌐
The global residential heat pump market is experiencing significant growth driven by increasing demand for energy-efficient heating and cooling solutions. It was valued at $38.7 billion in 2023 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 13.9% until 2032.
Other Key Players
All the traditional AC manufacturers like Daikin and Mitsubishi are also in the space but they haven’t innovated much.
Aira 🇸🇪: Has also revamped the heat pump market by integrating the whole value chain and creating a more user-friendly approach.
Still, Quilt is superior in efficiency, user experience, smart features and design.
Founding Story 🦄
Quilt was founded in California in 2022 by three former Google employees: Paul Lambert, Matthew Knoll and Bill Kee. Each bringing diverse skills in entrepreneurship, innovation, and product management, aimed to revolutionize the HVAC industry by transitioning homes from fossil fuel heating to electric heat pumps.
Paul Lambert, the CEO, previously led sustainability investments at Google's in-house incubator Area 120 and founded Learndot, a learning management system. Bill Kee, the COO, had experience leading product management teams in various tech fields, while Matthew Knoll, the CTO, worked on complex hardware and software projects, including Google's Loon.
They launched in May 2024 and by August they had sold out all available installation slots through the end of 2024. They’ve raised $42 million and will expand installations to the whole US + Canada in 2025.
Top Impact Stats 📈
1. Quilt's heat pumps can cut CO2 emissions by up to 50% compared to traditional HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) systems.
2. Their heat pumps have the potential to reduce CO2 emissions by 17-20% of all emissions from home energy use.
3. Quilt heat pumps achieve 400% efficiency, producing 4 units of heating or cooling for every 1 unit of electricity.
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