Why we invested in SolidWatts

A CERN spin-off replacing gas-fired process heat with solid-state radio-frequency power.

When people talk about decarbonizing industry, they usually picture steel mills and cement kilns. Less visible is the heat underneath almost everything else: drying food, curing plastics, recycling materials, driving chemical reactions. Industrial process heat is one of the largest energy uses on the planet, and most of it still comes from burning fossil fuels. The electric alternative that exists today, vacuum-tube microwave systems, wastes much of its power, wears out quickly and needs constant maintenance. For most plant operators, switching has simply not been worth it.

SolidWatts grew out of high-power radio-frequency engineering developed for CERN's accelerators. The team took that solid-state approach and re-engineered it for the factory floor. Its Solid-State Power Amplifiers heat materials from the inside out, the same principle as a kitchen microwave, but at industrial scale and far more efficiently than tube-based systems. The modules are stackable, with a roadmap to megawatt-class systems, and the solid-state design means much longer service life and less downtime.

Three things convinced us to invest. First, the efficiency gap versus incumbents is not incremental: it is the difference between electrification being a sustainability project and a cost-saving one. Second, the team brings hands-on RF engineering from one of the most demanding environments for this technology anywhere. Third, the go-to-market is staged sensibly: start at lower power levels where the technology can be de-risked and earn revenue early, then move up to the high-power systems where the biggest industrial prize sits.

Above all, we invested in the people. Founders Markus Aicheler and Jan Kovermann were both research fellows at CERN, working on high-power radio-frequency technology for the CLIC accelerator programme, and Markus spent a decade leading international technology research programmes before starting SolidWatts. Today he serves as CTO alongside CEO Michel Bonetti, a highly experienced C-level executive. We believed from the pre-seed that a team combining accelerator-grade engineering with industrial leadership could make electric process heat the obvious choice for manufacturers.