London-based climatetech company Tewke has recently raised a $3.4 million seed round to support the launch of its flagship product, Tap. With strong investor backing, the company has more than doubled its initial $1.3 million target. The funding will not only support the launch of Tap but also help further develop the product and its supporting platform, with a focus on addressing the residential sector’s energy inefficiency, where up to 60% of energy can be wasted.
TFN spoke with Rowan Dixon, Tewke’s Chief Operating Officer about their product, what sets it apart, and the company’s plans to transform our homes and lives.
Turning a simple switch into a smart energy solution
Tewke was founded in 2020 by serial entrepreneur Piers Daniell with the aim to accelerate the adoption of smart home technology, and the benefits that can bring. Around 30% of electricity is consumed by homes, but with much of it wasted, it creates unnecessary emissions and costs. It’s estimated that wasted energy is worth $5.5 billion in the UK alone, and a staggering $1 trillion worldwide.
Tap is intended to help address the waste that comes from some of our failings, like leaving the lights or the heating on when no-one is there. “We do have our flaws, and sometimes that is being lazy,” Dixon jokes. “Tap is like a very kind parent, going around the house saving energy.”
To accomplish this, they have focused on creating a sophisticated, but simple, device. Designed and manufactured entirely in the UK, Tewke’s design does not need a neutral electricity wire, so Tap can easily replace a light-switch. This places it in the Goldilocks zone for home automation, clearly visible and accessible for everyone. But the simplicity of the light-switch concept has also been a core part of their design.
“You don’t have to teach anyone how to use a light-switch,” Dixon said. “So, it will always come back to being a light switch. And it is as simple as that, a big old button you press and that turns on and off the lighting.”
The result is a device that anyone can use instinctively, while additional functionality is just a swipe away.
A simple control, with huge potential
The simple interface controls a sophisticated platform, and one that promises a lot more to come. The launch product, Tap, allows light control, and provides energy and environmental monitoring. But Dixon explained that much more is in the works.
“What we’re doing at the moment is delivering the absolute best standalone product possible,” Dixon explained. “However, the operating system that we’ve developed for this, Tewke OS, and all the hardware is compatible with standards like Thread and Matter.”
In fact, the hardware has been deliberately over-engineered with longevity in mind. “We want to deliver full backwards compatibility of all our software so that you aren’t having to switch out devices every few years,” said Dixon. That commitment includes the hardware, which incorporates sensors and devices, such as microphones, ready and waiting for future updates and integrations. Dixon explained, “this device has got a lot of headroom to grow in terms of capability. We’ve put in lots of hardware, which we’re not going to be using straightaway. I think we only use about 50% of the capability of the sensors on day one.”
Tap has yet to be publicly launched, having only just had a public preview. Its sleek design has already won plaudits, though, and Tewke collected the prestigious Red Dot Award for Design Concept. For those keen to get their hands on one, Tewke have opened a waitlist, and plan to ship their first units to early adopters in January 2025.
How Tewke hopes to shape the smart homes of the future
While other systems have promised home control and automation, they’ve never quite managed to overcome the friction of differing standards, awkward app-based controls, or the lag of voice commands. Dixon says that Tewke’s ambition is very much to create the homes of the future.
“At the moment, we’re just dealing with lights, but we’ve got a socket coming soon, then boiler controllers, and they all link back to Tap, which is the central brain of the home. You’ll have all those sensors working in harmony and no one else does that,” Dixon said. He believes it has the potential to give everyone the sort of homes usually inhabited by science fiction billionaires like Tony Stark.
“We really want to get to the stage where you never actually interact with our products at all! They are there in your house, but understand you so well that as you walk around your house, they are heating, adjusting the lighting, controlling the blinds,” he said. “It’s getting to that point of being that little helper. You don’t even really think about it, it just elevates your quality of life.”
Meanwhile, Tewke has also received UK Innovate funding from the UK Net Zero Pre-Commercialisation Support Fund and the Housing Digital Innovation Award.
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