Barocal raised a $10 million seed round to develop a heating and cooling system that uses an inexpensive solid material instead of vapor compression. The company says early prototypes match the performance of existing refrigerator compressors while using much less energy and avoiding climate-warming gas leaks linked to conventional systems. [1]
Investors in the round included World Fund, Breakthrough Energy Discovery, Cambridge Enterprise Ventures and IP Group. [1]
The company’s core technology comes from research by founder Xavier Moya at the University of Cambridge. Moya said, "I’ve always been very interested in technologies for heating and cooling," and recalled his first experience with air conditioning: "I really remember when air conditioning came to the house — it was like wow!" [1]
Moya also described the material effect behind the system, saying, "If you stretch it, it gets hot. And then if you wait, when you let it go, it feels cold." [1]
TechCrunch reported the funding and the technology on 2026-05-04. [1]
Barocal’s next step is to advance the technology beyond early prototypes as it works to bring the solid-state system toward commercial use. [1]