London-based energy management startup Boldr has raised €4.2 million ($5 million) in a pre-Series A round to expand its smart climate technology across North America, develop its contractor software platform, and move into a broader range of residential and commercial heating and cooling systems.
The round was led by Unconventional Ventures, with participation from Ada Ventures, Tetrad Ventures, Davidovs Venture Collective, Roxbury Asset Management, the Inclimo Climate Tech Fund, Prosegur, Techstars, the S20 Fund and PropelX.
Today’s funding also follows an oversubscribed €2.7 million ($3.2 million) Seed round in 2025.
“The next power plant won’t be one building. It will be millions of homes working together. But you don’t get there through a consumer app alone. You get there through the contractors who already install, service and replace the equipment that controls energy inside the home. Our job is to give them the technology to make that future possible,” says Madi Ablyazov, CEO and co-founder of Boldr.
Boldr’s pre-Series A comes amid continued 2026 investment in European technologies for building energy management, heating and cooling, and grid flexibility.
EU-Startups has reported rounds including
- €21 million for fellow London-based Axle Energy, which connects heat pumps, batteries and EV chargers to electricity markets,
- €10 million for Berlin heat-pump platform GALVANY,
- €7.8 million for Ghent-based enterprise energy-management startup Companion.energy,
- €40 million for building-sector smart-metering provider metiundo,
- €11 million for Helsinki virtual-power-plant operator Capalo AI.
- Other adjacent rounds include more than €15 million for Copenhagen’s Hybrid Greentech, €43 million for Munich-based battery optimisation company Entrix and €8.5 million for Cambridge heating-and-cooling startup Barocal.
Together, these rounds account for at least €156 million of 2026 funding. Boldr also has a particularly close domestic comparator in Axle Energy.
“Boldr is attacking one of the most important infrastructure challenges of the next decade: how to add flexible capacity to the grid quickly, affordably and at massive scale.
“The team has identified HVAC contractors as a critical partner in the electrification of the home. By building technology that helps contractors serve customers better while creating a path to distributed grid capacity, Boldr is positioned to become a defining company in residential energy management,” adds Alexis Horowitz-Burdick, Partner at Unconventional Ventures.
Founded in 2022, Boldr was established by Madi Ablyazov, Toma Paro and Matheus Marotzke. The company is building an energy management platform designed to connect equipment inside homes and other buildings, initially focusing on HVAC systems.
Its longer-term ambition is to bring equipment including heating and cooling systems, batteries, EV chargers and solar installations into a connected network capable of adjusting electricity demand when required by the grid.
Rather than focusing primarily on selling technology directly to homeowners, Boldr works with the HVAC contractors that already install, maintain and replace heating and cooling equipment.
The startup sees these existing contractor networks as a route for deploying connected energy technology at scale while giving contractors additional tools for managing installed systems.
One of its products is the Universal Thermostat, a hardware-agnostic climate control system developed to simplify installations for HVAC contractors. The system uses a wireless architecture in which a control module communicates with an equipment-side subbase, removing the need to install new physical thermostat wiring.
According to Boldr, this can save businesses as much as €428 ($500) in labour costs per installation.
Each installed unit can also send real-time telemetry to Boldr’s cloud platform. This gives contractors and operators remote information about equipment performance, helping them diagnose potential problems without immediately sending a technician to a property.
The company is also developing a specialised SaaS diagnostics platform intended to help contractors manage servicing, maintenance and longer-term customer relationships.
During periods when electricity demand is particularly high, connected equipment could reduce or shift its consumption, providing grid operators with additional flexibility without relying exclusively on additional centralised power generation and transmission infrastructure.
Boldr has already secured nationwide distribution partnerships in the US with HVAC companies and supply houses including Daikin and Bosch-owned Source 1, giving it access to established contractor networks.
