German smart thermostat startup Tado just raised $50 million in Series F funding, including from one very prominent backer: Amazon (AMZN).
With the latest infusion, the Munich-based startup nearly doubled its total funding. Tado’s device and app integrate with home heating and cooling systems to adjust temperatures based on usage and to maximize energy efficiency, and are already compatible with Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant.
Other backers in this round include German energy giant E.ON (EONGY), gas company Total and the European Investment Bank.
Could it be that Amazon is jealous of Nest? Google (GOOGL) purchased the smart thermostat company in 2014 for $3.2 billion and it remains the market leader in the U.S.
Tado was founded just a year later than Nest, in 2011, and went global with its product in 2015. The global smart thermostat market is expected to reach $6.8 billion by the end of 2022. A partner with Bryan, Garnier & Co, a leading European independent investment bank, told Handelsblatt that Tado is a prime candidate for an IPO.
The company says it has hundreds of thousands of users, mostly in Central Europe, and it has partnered with energy companies across the European Union. With the funding infusion, Tado will focus on research and development, for example improving its boiler health monitoring capacity.
TechCrunch reports: “Tado’s engineering play goes deeper than simply smart phone and location-based control of your home’s heating and cooling systems alone. The startup’s smart thermostat has been painstakingly engineered to be able to connect to the digital serial interface of thousands of different boilers.” This makes not only temperature modulation possible, but also local diagnostics and potentially grid-wide energy consumption management.
