Home electrification is a hardware business with a software margin hiding inside it, and German unicorn 1KOMMA5° is reorganising around that idea.
The Hamburg company has reached a valuation of $1.35B in its latest financing round and plans to invest more than €100M in its energy AI platform, Heartbeat, during 2027. The platform automates electricity trading, billing and metering for households that have installed solar, batteries and heat pumps.
The strategic reasoning is that owning the customer relationship matters more than owning the panel. Once a home has generation and storage, the value shifts to deciding when to store, when to sell and when to draw from the grid.
Chief executive Philipp Schröder has also signalled interest in entering the United States next year, and the company is revisiting earlier plans for a potential IPO.
Europe’s residential energy market has consolidated sharply over the past three years as installation businesses struggled with thin margins and volatile demand. Software-led operators with recurring revenue have fared better with investors than pure installers.
The open question is regulatory. Automated trading for retail households runs into different market rules in every country, which limits how quickly a platform built for Germany can travel.
