Why a Former AirPods Engineer is Now Building Heat Pumps
A former AirPods engineer is reinventing heat pump installation with a plug-in unit that costs $3,800 and takes just one hour to install.
Matilda
Why a Former AirPods Engineer is Now Building Heat Pumps
Heat Pumps Just Got Simpler — And This Apple Veteran Is Behind It California set a bold goal: 6 million heat pumps installed by 2030. As of today, it has reached only 2.3 million. To close that gap, the state would need to average 2,000 installations every single day for the next five years. The problem is not ambition. The problem is that heat pumps, as we know them, are simply too expensive and too complicated to install at that kind of scale. That is exactly what one former Apple engineer wants to change. The Woman Who Helped Sell AirPods Now Wants to Reinvent Heat Pumps Mary-Ann Rau is not your typical climate-tech founder. She spent years at Apple, where she appeared in product keynotes introducing new AirPods to the world. Later, she joined Quilt, a heat pump startup focused on premium home electrification. But it was her personal experience trying to electrify her own San Francisco home that pushed her to go further. Rau had already installed solar panels, an induction stove, and an…
