Nanolope raises €800K pre-Seed to turn building surfaces into phase-change thermal batteries

Nanolope (Berlin) has closed an €800,000 pre-Seed round led by IBB Ventures through its B# ("be sharp") pre-seed fund, alongside business angels and industry experts from the energy, real estate, and materials technology sectors. The company was founded in 2025 by Dr. Felix Marske (CEO and inventor of the core material), Eric Matthes (CTO, renewable energy engineering, former Fraunhofer CSP prototyping work), and Dominik L. Schreiber (CFO, serial entrepreneur with a prior exit in the construction sector).

Nanolope's product is a panel — installed on walls, ceilings, and floors — made from a plant-based phase-change material (PCM) that stores and releases heat passively as it shifts between solid and liquid states. The claim: the panels store up to 45 kWh/m³, roughly 24 times the thermal capacity of conventional gypsum plasterboard. The cycle life tested internally is 15,000 charge-discharge cycles, which Nanolope translates to a 70-year designed lifespan. Manufactured without rare earths and from EU-sourced renewable raw materials, the panels are designed for end-of-life recycling.

The retrofit proposition

The building renovation problem Nanolope targets is real. European building stock is old, and comprehensive renovations — replacing heating systems, re-insulating walls, upgrading windows — are expensive, slow, and disruptive. Nanolope's panels are designed to install without structural intervention: they mount to existing surfaces without scaffolding, and the work can proceed while buildings remain occupied and operational.

The target customers are not individual homeowners. Nanolope is selling to portfolio operators: housing companies, hotel groups, office building managers, and retail operators who need scalable solutions that do not require emptying buildings or large contractor mobilisation. The EU's updated Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) and taxonomy requirements are creating genuine regulatory pressure on these operators to demonstrate improving energy ratings across portfolios — giving Nanolope a compliance angle alongside the energy-cost argument.

The company claims a reduction in heating and cooling loads of up to 50% versus older systems. That figure flows from the thermal physics of PCM; it will need to be substantiated in live pilot buildings under real operating conditions before portfolio operators commit at scale.

What the funding covers

The €800K covers three priorities: scaling production from laboratory batches to volumes sufficient for pilot-scale installations, running initial pilots in commercial and residential buildings, and expanding the core team. Sabine Wolff, Principal at IBB Ventures, cited the team's expertise, experience, and ambition to set new standards in building materials in the face of climate regulation.

"The transition to sustainable heating will be decided in existing buildings," said Dr. Marske. "Many properties need solutions that can be retrofitted quickly and economically, without major structural interventions. That is exactly what we are developing."

The outcome of those pilots — measurable energy savings in operating buildings, proven installation speed, and cost-per-square-metre that competes with alternatives — is what a next financing round will be asked to evidence. At pre-seed, the bet is on the team and the thermodynamics. The commercial case remains to be built on site.