Fraunhofer spin-off Qurie raises €2.2M to reinvent refrigeration — without a compressor or refrigerant

The refrigeration industry has been running on the same 19th-century principle for over 150 years: compress a refrigerant, evaporate it, repeat. A Freiburg-based startup called Qurie wants to make that entire approach obsolete.

Founded in 2026 as a spin-off of the Fraunhofer Institute for Physical Measurement Techniques (IPM), Qurie has closed a €2.2 million seed round to bring a fundamentally different cooling technology to market — one that uses no compressors, no refrigerants, and produces almost no noise. The round was led by High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF), with participation from the Technology Transfer Fund TT49 (a Fraunhofer-linked VC backed by the European Investment Fund) and Aepikur GmbH.

The science behind the company

The core technology is electrocaloric cooling. Certain ceramics and polymers change temperature when an electric field is applied or removed — a reversible physical effect that can be stacked and cycled to build a complete refrigeration system with no moving parts, no pressure buildup, and no climate-damaging refrigerants.

Previous approaches to solid-state cooling — magnetocaloric, elastocaloric — have struggled to cross the threshold of economic viability. Qurie argues its heat pipe architecture changes that. At the centre of the platform is a globally patented active electrocaloric heat pipe (AEH), developed and tested at Fraunhofer IPM over more than a decade.

The numbers are striking: the theoretical efficiency ceiling of electrocaloric systems exceeds 80%, compared to a maximum of roughly 50% for conventional compressor-based cooling. That gap translates to around 40% lower energy consumption in practice.

The founders: a decade of research, now a company

Qurie was founded by two scientists who spent years building this technology inside Fraunhofer IPM before deciding to commercialise it.

Together they lead a team of more than ten experts in materials science, thermodynamics, and engineering based in Freiburg im Breisgau.

Why now: the F-Gas Regulation is forcing the industry’s hand

Qurie’s timing is not accidental. The revised EU F-Gas Regulation (EU 2024/573), which entered into force in March 2024, sets the most aggressive refrigerant phase-down schedule Europe has ever seen — targeting an 80% reduction in hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) by 2030 and a full phase-out by 2050.

The cascading restrictions are already biting: since January 2025, commercial refrigerators and freezers containing gases with a global warming potential above 150 are banned from the EU market. Service restrictions on air conditioning and heat pump equipment kick in from 2026. The sector has no comfortable runway left.

Natural refrigerants like propane (R-290) are gaining ground, but come with flammability trade-offs that limit deployment in certain environments. Solid-state electrocaloric systems sidestep the problem entirely — no refrigerant, no flammability risk, no regulatory exposure.

First market: industrial enclosure cooling

Rather than attempting to replace domestic fridges on day one, Qurie is entering through a precise beachhead: industrial enclosure cooling — the systems used to regulate temperature inside electrical cabinets, control panels, and laser equipment. This segment demands compact, quiet, reliable cooling — properties that electrocaloric technology delivers by design.

From there, the roadmap runs through commercial refrigeration, medical technology, electronics, and automotive. The miniaturisable solid-state architecture means Qurie’s systems can scale from chip cooling all the way up to building-level climate control.

Development will also be supported through the end of 2026 by a research grant from Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWE).

Investor perspective

“Qurie addresses a challenge that has occupied the refrigeration industry for decades: moving away from climate-damaging refrigerants and inefficient compressors — without compromising on cost. The team has developed a technically compelling answer, backed by strong patents and more than ten years of research at Fraunhofer IPM.”

— Dr. Gernot Berger, Senior Investment Manager, High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF)

HTGF is one of Europe’s most active deep-tech seed investors, having backed over 800 startups since 2005 with a fund volume exceeding €2 billion. TT49, the co-investing Fraunhofer Technology Transfer Fund, focuses specifically on early-stage ventures emerging from German research institutions — making Qurie a natural fit for both.

The bigger picture

Global energy demand for cooling is one of the fastest-growing components of electricity consumption. Even in Germany — a relatively cool country — over 73 TWh of electrical power per year is consumed for technical cooling. Scale that across Southern Europe, Asia, and the Global South, and the market Qurie is entering becomes enormous.

The compressor-based cooling industry has had 150 years. Regulation is now forcing a transition that the market alone would never have delivered fast enough. Qurie is one of the few companies that spent over a decade building toward exactly this moment — and now has the funding to start proving it commercially.

Qurie GmbH is based in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany. More information at qurie.de.

Related articles: Leipzig biotech Primogene raises €4.1M to produce human milk molecules at an industrial scale — starting with premature infant nutrition | NanoStruct raises €2.6M to detect Listeria and Salmonella in hours, not days | Sedivention raises €2.9M for a one-time obesity treatment — no surgery, no drugs, no implants