Heat pump tech is 170 years old — Pascal thinks it’s time for an update — SkimNews
Get the Tech newsletter
Daily tech — startups, AI labs, chips, the launches that shape the next decade. Free.
- Pascal raised $8.5 million in a follow-on to its seed round, co-led by Sazze Partners and LB Investment with participation from KDB Silicon Valley, the company told TechCrunch exclusively.
- Adam Slavney (CEO) and co-founder/CTO Jinyoung Seo built Pascal on Harvard research where swapping test gases for an instrument-requirement fix unexpectedly produced different measurements, eventually revealing a new solid-state refrigeration mechanism.
- Pascal's system compresses carbon dioxide into cartridges filled with a proprietary sponge-like porous material rather than squeezing a solid block, a design the company says makes the full system roughly 20% more efficient than current refrigerators and heat pumps.
- Pascal signed its first pilot contract with a multinational beverage company; the startup plans to deliver its first prototype early next year and a batch of more polished refrigerators in 2028.
- The proprietary porous material has been cycled up to 300,000 times — equivalent to roughly a year of operation — and Pascal says the system runs at conventional pressures rather than the high pressures other solid-state refrigerants require.
- CEO Slavney called the refrigerant industry a "never-ending treadmill," with Freon having depleted the ozone layer while successor coolants like R-134a remain potent greenhouse gases.
Why it matters: Pascal's $8.5M raise and beverage-company pilot put a solid-state refrigerant — roughly 20% more efficient than current coolants and unable to leak into the atmosphere — on its first commercial proving ground, while Slavney's stated bet on conventional-pressure systems targets the manufacturing-cost barriers that have kept competing solid-state approaches on the shelf.
Ask SkimNews
