Munich-Based Celsio Raises €1.2 Million to Scale Industrial Decarbonization Software

Munich Climatetech Startup Celsio Secures €1.2 Million

The company plans to use the capital to move pilot plants into commercial operation, expand its trading capacity, and grow its partnerships and team. For industrial decarbonisation, the relevant variable is not another electrification promise. It is whether software can improve the unit economics of process heat under changing energy prices.

The operating model

Celsio develops trading software for industrial power-to-heat systems. The system controls industrial equipment in real time while accounting for electricity and gas markets.

The logic is direct:

1. If electricity prices fall, electric boilers generate the required heat.

2. If electricity prices rise, the system switches to existing gas systems.

3. If thermal storage is available, it can also be used.

4. The software connects to day-ahead, intraday, and balancing energy markets.

This is a dispatch problem. The bottleneck is not only the availability of electric heat generation. It is the ability to select the lowest-cost energy source while maintaining industrial heat output.

Celsio combines electric heat generation with existing gas systems and optional thermal storage. That allows an industrial site to add power-to-heat capacity without relying on a single source under every market condition. The company is targeting businesses with high heat requirements, often in the form of steam, including companies in the chemical, paper, and food industries.

The source reports that process heat represents around two-thirds of industrial energy demand in Europe and remains predominantly fossil-fuelled. Celsio’s stated proposition is therefore built around an existing operating constraint: industrial heat must be decarbonised without ignoring price volatility, plant configuration, or production continuity.

What the funding has to prove

The €1.2 million round is pre-seed capital. Its immediate function is to increase execution throughput, not to demonstrate category dominance.

Celsio says the funding will support four workstreams:

• transitioning pilot plants into commercial operation;
• expanding trading capacity;
• developing partnerships;
• growing the team.

For founders and investors in ClimateTech, these are separate delivery parameters. A pilot plant can show technical feasibility. Commercial operation must also support reliable control, market access, customer integration, and repeatable economics. If any one of those becomes the bottleneck, additional funding increases burn rate without increasing deployment throughput.

The company states that investments in electric boilers are expected to pay for themselves in less than three years. That is a company expectation, not an independently verified result in the available material. The practical diligence question is whether the payback depends on specific electricity-price conditions, available gas infrastructure, thermal storage, or access to multiple electricity markets.

Celsio plans to work with established equipment providers to design the power-to-heat solution for each industrial site and then optimise ongoing operations. That structure places the software layer at the centre of the model. The hardware is part of the deployment, but the recurring value depends on continuous optimisation after installation.

The next milestones

The company was founded by Tim Engelmann and Stefan Jokiel, who met at the Center for Digital Technology and Management, the joint innovation programme of TU München and LMU München. The founding team combines expertise in energy markets, industrial plants, and software development.

Additional support comes through the Exist Start-up Grant and the DBU Green Startup Grant. The financing also includes participation from CDTM Venture Fund and several business angels from the European energy and startup scene.

The next evidence point is commercial conversion. If pilot plants move into operation, Celsio will need to show that its software can maintain heat delivery while switching between electricity, gas, and storage. If trading capacity expands, the company will need to demonstrate that market participation improves operating economics rather than adding system complexity.

Binary check:

• Validated: €1.2 million pre-seed funding, lead investor Caesar.VC, and a defined rollout plan for industrial power-to-heat trading software.
• Not yet validated in the available evidence: commercial-scale throughput, realised customer savings, emissions reductions, and the stated sub-three-year payback.