Tewke: Climate Tech Company Raises $3.4 Million (Seed)

By Amit Chowdhry • Nov 26, 2024

Tewke, a climate tech company building the future of energy optimization and home automation, announced that it has raised $3.4 million in funding. Tewke will use the funding to continue developing its domestic energy control platform to automate energy savings in any home and deliver the next generation of home automation. Tewke, launched by serial entrepreneur Piers Daniell in 2020, is the first step and backbone in their vision to create a future smart grid.

The residential sector consumes a large percentage of all electricity. By focusing on residential electricity consumption, Tewke identified that frequently, 60% of a home’s energy is wasted. This energy produces greenhouse gases but does not benefit consumers. Within the UK, consumers waste over $5.5 billion in energy costs annually, and globally, this is estimated to exceed $1 trillion, something Tewke is tackling head-on.

Tewke had initially opened its equity seed round with a $1.3 million goal, but due to strong interest from investors in the UK and internationally, it was able to overraise to help accelerate hardware and software development. This additional funding is being used to accelerate its go-to-market proposition and to grow its software team, focusing on developing its neuro-symbolic AI systems and enabling further energy optimizations.

Tewke has been developing its first product Tap (an intelligent light switch), which was first shown off at a private preview event this October. And it will be exhibited at CES 2025 in Las Vegas in January 2025. Tap is unique in the home automation industry. It is the first touchscreen light switch to be launched that does not require a neutral wire or smart lightbulbs to function, making it easily adoptable because it doesn’t require any home rewiring. It is designed to be installed into any existing home in the US, UK or Europe.

By creating a smart light switch, Tewke is positioning itself in the “goldilocks zone” of the home. This area has eluded other companies for years due to technical challenges around powering such a device without neutral wires. And light switches are uniquely placed to provide the best experience for any smart home device, often falling in high foot-fall areas, being at convenient heights to be operated by all members of the family and having a great view of a room to understand the home environment comprehensively.

Tewke has created all its technologies in-house, from the patent-pending electronics that enable it to be installed in any home to its custom operating system, Tewke OS. This enables Tewke to optimise energy savings and the user experience at every level.

KEY QUOTE:

“Over the last 20 years there has been a shift in attitude towards technology and awareness of energy consumption”. Recent software and hardware developments are accelerating smart home adoption. “There have been small movements towards adopting more energy efficient systems, and smart-home technologies, but there has always been a lack of a fully integrated system that can autonomously automate energy savings, and Tewke is changing that. Often energy savings are associated with some kind of compromise, but at Tewke we are building a platform that will elevate people’s homes, making them more environmentally friendly, intuitive and secure.”

– Piers Daniell, Founder of Tewke