The HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) industry faces fundamental challenges: regulatory, environmental, and technological. Qurie has the answer. The Freiburg-based start-up, founded in 2026 as a spin-off of the Fraunhofer Institute for Physical Measurement Techniques IPM, develops electrocaloric refrigeration systems that operate without compressors, refrigerants, or pressure build-up: quieter, more efficient, and more sustainable than anything previously possible.
In April 2026, High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF), Technology Transfer Fund TT49, and Aepikur GmbH jointly invested €2.2 million in Qurie.
Cooling Through Material Intelligence:
Conventional refrigeration systems have relied on a 19th-century principle: compression and evaporation of refrigerants. The EU F-Gas Regulation is setting a regulatory expiry date for this era, and alternative approaches such as magnetocaloric or elastocaloric cooling have so far failed to achieve competitive total operating costs. Qurie takes a fundamentally different approach: electrocaloric materials, certain ceramics and polymers, change their temperature when an electric field is applied or removed. Qurie harnesses this reversible physical effect in precisely stacked material structures to build complete refrigeration systems, without a compressor, without refrigerants, with minimal mechanical components.
At the heart of the technology is a globally patented active electrocaloric heat pipe (AEH), developed and extensively tested at Fraunhofer IPM over more than ten years. The theoretical efficiency of such systems exceeds 80 percent, conventional compressors reach a maximum of 50 percent, representing a potential energy saving of around 40 percent.
Dr. Kilian Bartholomé, CTO and Co-Founder, Qurie GmbH: “With our heat pipe approach, we transfer heat within the system very efficiently and can achieve significantly higher pumping frequencies than previously possible with liquid-based heat transport. This is what makes our technology genuinely competitive for the first time.”
Science. Engineering. Impact:
Qurie was founded by Dr. Christian Vogel (CEO), a renowned expert in novel cooling systems, and Dr. Kilian Bartholomé (CTO), a long-standing researcher at Fraunhofer IPM. Their interdisciplinary team of more than ten experts in materials science, thermodynamics, and engineering works at the intersection of fundamental research and industrial application to transform global HVAC infrastructure. The miniaturizable solid-state architecture opens up entirely new form factors: from chip cooling and portable medical devices to automotive and building technology.
The first target market is industrial enclosure coolin, a segment with high precision requirements and no fully satisfactory solution currently available. From there, Qurie plans to expand into commercial refrigeration, medical technology, electronics, and automotive. Development will be further supported until the end of 2026 by a research programme funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWE).
Dr. Christian Vogel, CEO and Co-Founder, Qurie GmbH: “The HVAC industry is facing a fundamental transformation, regulatory, technological, and economic. We have reached a point where we can demonstrate that our technology not only works but also makes economic sense. This is the moment we have been working towards.”
Dr. Gernot Berger, Senior Investment Manager, High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF): “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. We are very delighted to support Qurie on this journey.”
