Zero Homes is a Denver-based startup building a digital-first platform for residential heat pump and home electrification upgrades. Founded in 2022 by Grant Gunnison — an MIT-trained engineer with early-career experience at NASA and a background running a general contracting business — the company is trying to solve one of the central friction points in home decarbonization: the installation experience is too slow, too opaque, and too dependent on in-person sales visits that homeowners don't want and contractors can't scale.
Zero Homes' core product is a software platform that allows homeowners to design a heat pump or HVAC system remotely — using a mobile app to scan their home and generate a digital twin — receive a transparent, customized quote with available rebates and incentives already applied, and have the installation managed through Zero Homes' network of vetted local contractors. The company does not employ its own installers; instead it builds a marketplace layer between homeowners and the skilled trades, handling the complexity of system design, load calculations, permit management, and incentive stacking that typically causes home electrification projects to stall or never start.
In February 2026, Zero Homes announced a $16.8 million Series A round led by Prelude Ventures, with participation from SJF Ventures, Exelon Foundation, VoLo Earth Ventures, Overture VC, and FJ Labs. The capital is being used to expand into new markets beyond the company's Colorado base — it is now operating in Massachusetts, Minnesota, Illinois, and California — and to broaden its product suite beyond heat pumps to other home upgrade categories. The company has been covered by Fast Company, Canary Media, Axios, and Clean Technica as an emerging player in the climate tech home services space.
Residential heat pump adoption in the United States has lagged its potential despite strong economics, generous IRA tax credits (up to $2,000 for heat pump installation under the Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit), and growing consumer awareness of electrification benefits. The bottleneck is not demand — surveys consistently show homeowners are open to heat pumps when they understand them — but installation friction. Getting a heat pump installed typically requires finding a qualified contractor, scheduling an in-home sales visit, waiting weeks for a quote, navigating a confusing landscape of utility rebates and federal tax credits, pulling permits, and coordinating utility interconnection. For most homeowners, this process is opaque enough that the project never gets off the ground.
The contractor shortage compounds the problem. HVAC contractors qualified to install and commission heat pumps are in short supply nationally, and demand from utilities, states, and federal programs has only intensified competition for their time. The best contractors have full order books and little incentive to prioritize individual homeowner jobs that require long sales cycles and manual quoting. A platform that handles the sales, design, and administrative overhead — delivering a ready-to-execute job to a contractor's schedule — reduces their customer acquisition cost and allows them to take on more work with less friction.
The incentive landscape adds another layer of complexity. Between federal tax credits, state rebates, utility incentives, and local programs, a homeowner installing a heat pump in some markets can offset 30–70% of the upfront cost. But identifying and stacking all available incentives requires research that most homeowners won't do and that varies significantly by zip code, utility, and household income. Zero Homes automates this: customers see a price net of all applicable incentives before they commit to anything.
Zero Homes' technology stack centers on three capabilities. The first is digital home twin creation: homeowners use the Zero Homes mobile app to photograph and scan their home, providing the data inputs needed for accurate system design without an in-person visit. The platform processes these inputs — square footage, existing equipment, ductwork configuration, insulation, window count — into a structured representation of the home's heating and cooling load characteristics.
The second capability is automated system design. Zero Homes applies ACCA Manual J load calculation methodology (the HVAC industry standard for residential heating and cooling load calculations) and DOE-validated sizing guidelines to the digital home twin to produce a properly sized heat pump recommendation. This is more technically rigorous than the rules of thumb many HVAC contractors use — oversized systems are common in the industry and reduce efficiency and comfort — and provides homeowners with documented justification for the system they're being sold.
The third is incentive identification and quote transparency. Zero Homes' software queries available federal, state, utility, and local rebate programs by the customer's address, applies eligibility rules, and presents a net-after-incentive price in the customer-facing quote. This removes one of the most significant pain points in the home electrification sales process — customers can see their actual out-of-pocket cost and projected energy bill savings before making any commitment. The platform also handles permit applications and contractor coordination, allowing a homeowner to go from first contact to completed installation with substantially less personal time and phone calls than the traditional HVAC process.
Zero Homes operates as a platform between homeowners and a vetted network of installation contractors, rather than employing its own crews. This asset-light model means the company does not carry the labor and fleet costs of a field services company, but it also means that the quality of the installation experience depends on contractor network management. Zero Homes vets contractors for licensing, insurance, heat pump certification, and customer service track record; the platform's review system and contractor scoring provide ongoing quality signal.
Revenue is generated on a per-project basis, with Zero Homes earning a margin on the total installed cost. The business model is structurally similar to other home services marketplaces — Zero Homes is not the cheapest way to get a heat pump installed, but it is positioned as the most convenient and transparent, and the incentive savings it surfaces for customers often more than offset any price premium. The platform's ability to identify and apply rebates accurately is a genuine value-add that directly reduces customer cost, distinguishing it from traditional contractors who may not be current on all available programs.
Scaling the contractor network is the key operational challenge for this model. In each new market, Zero Homes must recruit, vet, and onboard contractors before it can serve customers at meaningful volume. The company's expansion into Massachusetts, Minnesota, Illinois, and California — markets with distinct utility rebate structures, climate profiles, and contractor ecosystems — tests whether the platform's design tools and incentive database can be adapted to new geographies without proportional increases in headcount.
Zero Homes is competing in a space that has attracted significant attention and capital: digitally-enabled home electrification services. The IRA created a decade-long incentive structure for heat pumps, weatherization, and other home upgrades — a policy tailwind that most participants in this market are counting on to drive adoption. Competitors and comparables include Elephant Energy (focused on coordinating whole-home electrification projects), Sealed (efficiency upgrades on a pay-from-savings model), Rewiring America (policy advocacy and consumer education), and a number of utility-backed programs that offer managed heat pump installations.
Zero Homes' differentiation rests on the software platform — specifically the digital home twin and automated ACCA-compliant system design that allows remote quoting without an in-home visit. If this technical capability is accurate enough that contractors can execute installations from remotely-designed specifications with low rework rates, it provides a genuine operational efficiency advantage that is difficult for traditional contractors to replicate. The Series A investors appear to be betting that the platform approach — rather than building a vertically integrated field services company — is the right model for achieving national scale in a market where local contractor networks vary enormously.
The principal risks are execution-dependent. Residential services businesses are notoriously hard to scale: customer acquisition is local, contractor quality is variable, and a single bad installation experience in a small market can damage reputation disproportionately. The IRA incentive landscape that makes the business case compelling for customers is also subject to policy risk — any reduction in federal heat pump credits or state rebate programs would raise effective customer prices and slow adoption. And the broader question facing all home electrification startups — whether the market can grow fast enough, soon enough, to sustain venture-scale businesses — remains open. Zero Homes' Series A gives it runway to prove the model across multiple geographies; what it does with that runway will determine whether the platform thesis holds at scale.
This profile was compiled from publicly available information including:
Zero Homes website — Product overview, service areas, customer examples, and blog posts including the Series A announcement.
Series A press release (February 2026); coverage in Fast Company, Canary Media, Axios, and Clean Technica.
This profile is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice, a recommendation, or a solicitation to buy or sell any security. Zero Homes is a private company; financial data is limited to publicly disclosed information.