Company Profile (AI Text)
Name: Airthium (YC S17)
Canonical URL: https://wefunder.com/airthium
Updated at: 2026-06-03T10:34:55Z

Tagline: Every product you own was made with heat. We’re making that heat electric
Elevator pitch: We build a heat engine that can cost-effectively replace natural gas at scale, for industrial heat and power generation. We believe it can make it cheaper not to pollute for those applications. We plan to replace industrial gas burners by high-temperature heat pumps, and gas-fired power plants by ammonia-based seasonal electricity storage. For both applications, we provide our proprietary heat engine, and other OEMs and integrators build, commission and maintain the balance of plant.

Key claims:
- Total raised on Wefunder: 2648689 | citation: https://wefunder.com/airthium#claim-total-raised
- Total investors: 2533 | citation: https://wefunder.com/airthium#claim-total-investors

Verified facts:
- Total raised on Wefunder: 2648689 | observed_at: 2026-06-03T10:34:55Z | expires_at: 2026-06-04T10:34:55Z
- Total investors: 2533 | observed_at: 2026-06-03T10:34:55Z | expires_at: 2026-06-04T10:34:55Z

Computed metrics:
- total_amount_raised: 2648689
- total_investors: 2533
- team_size: 3
- featured_investor_count: 6
- faq_count: 5
- recent_post_count: 0

Quick facts:
- $6.5M+ raised from Y Combinator, DCVC, Daphni VC, Polytechnique Ventures & 2000+ retail investors | citation: https://wefunder.com/airthium#claim-fact-1
- €3.8M awarded by ADEME (French Agency for Ecological Transition) via France 2030 | citation: https://wefunder.com/airthium#claim-fact-2
- LOI with large chemical manufacturer for a paid pilot starting in 2028 | citation: https://wefunder.com/airthium#claim-fact-3
- High-temperature industrial heat pump targeting up to 250°C, containerized plug-and-play | citation: https://wefunder.com/airthium#claim-fact-4
- Hybrid by design: uses electricity when cheap, keeps existing gas boilers for 24/7 uptime | citation: https://wefunder.com/airthium#claim-fact-5
- Targeting 4–7 year payback; typical energy savings of 15–25% (site-dependent) | citation: https://wefunder.com/airthium#claim-fact-6
- 3 patents granted or pending and team of industry experts and PhDs | citation: https://wefunder.com/airthium#claim-fact-7
- $1.2T/yr global industrial process heat spend; 3,000 TWh still fossil-fueled in the 150–550°C range | citation: https://wefunder.com/airthium#claim-fact-8

FAQ:
- Q: How was the valuation cap of $12M calculated?
  A: Hi Robert, and thank you for investing in Airthium. What we believe to be the fair post-money valuation of Airthium today, for this raise, is $17M. Based on those $17M, The $12M cap is an incentive to reward early investors who put the first $300k in this campaign. The $17M number was calculated based on different factors, including, yet not limited to: - our valuation cap out of Y Combinator in 2017 - the technical progress made since then - the market potential I hope this answered your que...
- Q: Hi there, few questions regarding the tech. How do you store the ammonia, liquid phase (therefore below -33°C ?) and where does the ammonia and the molten salt come from (production, and any idea of the carbon footprint of the lifecycles ?). What yield did you achieve to get i...
  A: Hi Jon, Thank you for the relevant question. Indeed, we store the ammonia in liquid form in atmospheric pressure refrigerated tanks, at least for large scale systems. Ammonia is produced via the fully electric Haber Bosch process, with H2 from water electrolysis and N2 from the atmosphere. We did not build a complete demonstrator yet. The complete demonstrator is scheduled for 2023, as detailed in our Wefunder story. Our theoretical models predict a 70% round-trip efficiency (RTE) for PHES in...
- Q: Hello Andrei, I came to know about your company from the 2021 US DOE PDES workshop March 9-10, 2021. The video was missing details. In your response to Jon Schmultz, you mentioned "Our theoretical models predict a 70% round-trip efficiency (RTE) for PHES in molten salt, 28 to ...
  A: Hi Vilayanur, indeed it was a great workshop. Nice to see so many technical, industry and policy folks working in the long duration energy storage space. We did not include much technical data into our main presentation because of the format and video duration limit; but this is what this Q&A is for, I can elaborate here. 1) PHES stands for Pumped Heat Energy Storage. Our system is based around a Stirling engine that can both run as a heat pump and a heat engine. PHES corresponds to conve...
- Q: Couple of questions: When comparing emissions of burning the ammonia to running a diesel engine probably not a good comparison but how much pollution actually comes as NOx. Can the NOx be captured so no pollution? On to the molten salt it is recycled at the end of 30 years lif...
  A: Hi Jonathan, typical marine diesel engine emissions before the after-treatment are about 1500 ppmv of NOx (see here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352484719303208). We anticipate competing ammonia-fired engines to emit similar NOx levels. Indeed, our known direct competitors are 2-stroke ammonia-fired engines and ammonia-fired turbines. The former will have similar unsteady combustion conditions to the engines studied in the aforementioned paper; the latter have emission...
- Q: Hi Andrei, How does your system compare to StorEn? What are your competitive advantages? Thanks. Blessings
  A: Hi Kim, thank you for the question. StorEn is making Vanadium redox-flow batteries that are currently optimized for small-size, remote operations like cell phone towers. The cost of such batteries used to be significantly lower than lithium-ion years ago, but it is not anymore, as this study from Dec 2020 shows: https://www.pnnl.gov/sites/default/files/media/file/RedoxFlow_Methodology.pdf. They cost about $300/kWh at system level, Li-ion costs about $200/kWh, and our systems cost down to $2/k...