Barocal, a University of Cambridge spin-out developing refrigerant-gas-free heating and cooling technology, has raised a $10 million seed round to accelerate engineering hires and commercial deployment of its solid-state platform. The round was led by World Fund alongside Breakthrough Energy Discovery, Cambridge Enterprise Ventures and IP Group, with IP Group contributing £2 million as part of the financing. The capital is being directed toward scaling operations and recruiting senior technical and commercial talent ahead of the company's first commercial systems.

The funding arrives as the company positions itself against vapour-compression cooling technology that has dominated the heating and cooling market for more than a century. Barocal's platform is designed to compete on cost while eliminating the use of gas refrigerants that carry high global warming potential. The company is initially targeting data centre cooling and commercial refrigeration, two segments where energy intensity and refrigerant exposure are both rising rapidly.

 

Targeting a $450 Billion Cooling Sector

 

The global heating, ventilation and air conditioning market is currently valued at around $450 billion and is expected to expand to approximately $577 billion by 2033, driven by data centre buildouts, urbanisation and rising cooling demand in emerging economies. The sector is responsible for roughly 15 percent of annual global greenhouse gas emissions, a share that exceeds aviation but receives far less policy and capital attention. Cooling alone generated more than 4 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2022, with demand projected to triple by 2050 as warming temperatures and digital infrastructure expansion accelerate consumption.

Buildings account for around 7 percent of global emissions on their own, which makes cleaner thermal management a structural decarbonisation priority rather than an incremental efficiency play. Barocal's pitch to investors centres on the argument that displacing vapour compression at cost parity could deliver some of the largest available emission reductions in the built environment. Capturing even a small share of the HVAC market would translate into meaningful avoided emissions.

 

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The Underlying Materials Breakthrough

 

The company was founded in 2019 by Professor Xavier Moya, a materials researcher whose work on caloric materials was funded by the Royal Society and the European Research Council. After more than 15 years of research, Moya identified a way to overcome the cost, degradation and fatigue limitations that had constrained earlier caloric materials. His team built and patented a platform based on barocaloric materials, which use pressure-driven phase transitions to generate substantial temperature changes without relying on refrigerant gases.

The technology is engineered to deliver heating and cooling at higher efficiency than vapour-compression systems while matching their cost profile, a combination that has eluded the field for decades. Barocal has already secured external validation, including the $1 million 2025 TERA-Award, which recognises breakthroughs with potential to reshape global energy systems. The seed round is intended to translate that scientific progress into deployable hardware for commercial customers.

 

Investor Conviction Around Solid-State Heat Transfer

 

Mark Windeknecht, Principal at World Fund, said Barocal had achieved a materials breakthrough that scientists had pursued for decades, delivering a solid-state platform capable of competing with vapour-based incumbents. Ashley Grosh, Head of Breakthrough Energy Discovery, noted that the firm first supported Barocal through its Fellows programme, citing the technical depth and commercial potential of Moya's research. Dr Lee Thornton, Partner for Deeptech at IP Group, described the investment as the classic type of transformational deeptech company the firm backs, pointing to expected efficiency gains across data centres, refrigeration and residential cooling.

The investor base reflects a concentration of European and global climate-focused capital around hard-to-abate thermal applications. World Fund manages a €300 million climate technology fund, while Breakthrough Energy Discovery operates as the pre-venture innovation arm of Breakthrough Energy. The combined backing positions Barocal to move from laboratory validation toward early commercial pilots without the dilution pressures often faced by deeptech hardware companies at this stage.

 

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Strategic Implications for Cooling Decarbonisation

 

Founder Professor Xavier Moya described heating and cooling as the elephant in the room of global emissions, arguing that solving the sector's footprint would deliver roughly half of the cuts needed to remain within a 1.5 degree warming pathway. While that framing is ambitious, it underscores the scale of the addressable problem and the strategic value of any technology that can credibly displace vapour compression at scale. If barocaloric systems achieve commercial cost parity with conventional units, the technology could become a default replacement option in retrofit and new-build cycles over the next decade.

For data centre operators, where cooling can account for a substantial share of total power consumption, a more efficient and refrigerant-free system would address both operational cost and Scope 1 emissions exposure simultaneously. The next milestones for Barocal include expanding its engineering capacity, finalising platform specifications for commercial pilots and demonstrating performance at scale in real customer environments. Execution on those steps will determine whether the company can convert its scientific lead into durable market share.

 

Source: GlobeNewsWire