1KOMMA5° is a prominent example of physical-world AI agents. Their Heartbeat AI is a domain-specific agent that operates with clear goals: minimizing energy costs and carbon intensity for the homeowner while maintaining home comfort. It functions by observing a complex environment (fluctuating market prices, weather forecasts, and home energy load) and taking autonomous actions to control hardware.
For the broader agent ecosystem, the company demonstrates how LLMs are not the only form of agentic behavior. Heartbeat AI is a deterministic but intelligent agent that solves a high-stakes resource allocation problem. As the ecosystem moves toward "agents that do things," 1KOMMA5° provides a model for how agents can interface with critical physical infrastructure and financial markets to deliver tangible economic value.
1KOMMA5° is built on a thesis that the transition to renewable energy cannot be solved by software or hardware alone. Founded in 2021 by Philipp Schröder—a former director at Tesla and the storage company sonnen—the company aims to reach the 1.5-degree climate target by making home electrification financially unavoidable. Based in Hamburg, the firm has quickly grown to over 3,000 employees across Europe and Australia, fueled by a capital-intensive strategy of acquiring local installation companies and unifying them under a single brand and software platform.
The core of the technical offering is Heartbeat AI. This software is an autonomous energy manager for the home. It connects disparate hardware components—solar panels, battery storage, heat pumps, and electric vehicle chargers—into a cohesive system. Rather than just providing a dashboard for manual monitoring, Heartbeat AI acts as an agent on the owner's behalf. It monitors the EPEX SPOT electricity exchange in real-time, identifying periods when wind and solar production are high and prices are low. During these windows, the software automatically triggers high-consumption activities, such as charging a car or heating a water tank. When prices rise, it shifts the home to battery power or sells excess energy back to the grid.
What distinguishes 1KOMMA5° from other climate tech startups is its physical footprint. By operating over 80 locations, the company handles the actual labor of installation, which remains the primary bottleneck in residential energy. This vertical integration ensures that every piece of hardware in the home is compatible with the Heartbeat software from day one. This controlled ecosystem allows the company to aggregate its customers into a Virtual Power Plant (VPP).
At a scale of approximately 50,000 systems, 1KOMMA5° manages over 600 megawatts of capacity. This aggregation is significant because it allows residential customers to participate in the energy market with the same efficiency as industrial players. The company claims this system can achieve an average electricity price of under 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, significantly lower than standard retail rates in markets like Germany.
1KOMMA5° occupies a unique space between hardware manufacturers like Tesla or Enphase and digital-first energy providers like Octopus Energy or Enpal. While Enpal focuses on a rental model for solar panels, 1KOMMA5° emphasizes the "Heartbeat" logic as a way to turn a home into an active, income-generating node in the grid.
In December 2024, the company secured a €150 million pre-IPO financing round to continue its European expansion. The primary challenge for the company is the complexity of managing a massive, distributed workforce of installers while maintaining the high-margin software-as-a-service profile expected by its venture capital backers. If successful, 1KOMMA5° will move beyond being a mere installer and become a decentralized utility that operates via millions of autonomous energy agents.
Energy management software that connects home solar and heating systems to the electricity market for price optimization.
1Komma5° is hiring.