When the experimental results came back, they puzzled Adam Slavney and Jinyoung Seo. They had been testing a new class of materials for more efficient refrigerators, air conditioners, and heat pumps, a mission that the cooling appliance industry has been on for eons. The measurements for the materials that the team was testing shouldn’t have been different, but they were.

“Why are these things different? What did we change?” Slavney told TechCrunch. “We had an inkling of it within three-ish months, but we didn’t have definitive proof for a year or two.”

That proof is now underpinning Slavney’s startup, Pascal, where he’s co-founder and CEO and Seo is co-founder and CTO. The company recently raised $8.5 million in a follow-on to its seed round, co-led by Sazze Partners and LB Investment with participation from KDB Silicon Valley, the company exclusively told TechCrunch.

A refrigerator or heat pump using Pascal’s material promises to be around 20% more efficient than existing models, he said. (Both heat pumps and refrigerators use the same basic technology.) The startup has signed a contract with a multinational beverage company for a pilot of the technology.

“This whole funding round came together originally because we got a customer contract earlier than we were expecting to,” Slavney said. Pascal is on track to deliver its first prototype early next year, and it hopes to follow that with a batch of more polished refrigerators in 2028.

Scientists have been searching for better refrigerants for almost as long as refrigerators have existed.

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