For MAGNOTHERM, there was never one defining eureka moment when the vision of building a global company suddenly became clear. Instead, the journey from academic research to startup was marked by a combination of optimism, realism and a willingness to keep going even when progress was slow.
From the beginning, the ambition was substantial. The team set out to change nothing less than the cooling industry itself and to do so in a way that could make a meaningful contribution to sustainability. While most of the world still relies on gas compression, a standard that has dominated refrigeration for around a century and a half, MAGNOTHERM is developing an alternative based on magnetic cooling: highly efficient, safe and significantly more environmentally friendly.
With its new unit, Eclipse, the company has now made the crucial leap from a promising technology demonstrator to a solution with real product-market fit.
The fact that a major industry player with close to €100 billion in annual revenue is now investing in the technology is a significant endorsement. When a company of that size publicly signals belief in a new solution, it sends a clear message to the market about where real future potential may lie.
And the opportunity is vast. Today, gas compression still powers 99.9 percent of cooling systems worldwide, often relying on climate-damaging F-gases. MAGNOTHERM wants to challenge that status quo. Following its entry into food retail, the company is already looking ahead to applications in data centres, building climate systems and medical technology. Even capturing just one percent of a global market of five billion systems would represent a substantial step for climate protection.
To convince investors in such a complex deep-tech field, MAGNOTHERM focuses on three things: enormous scaling potential, a working prototype that can be experienced in practice, and a mindset of relentless persistence — what the team internally calls simply “digging.”
The partnership with REWE did not happen by chance. It grew out of a strong ecosystem and the right connections. A key milestone was the matchmaking at the de:hub Smart Infrastructure Leipzig (SpinLab - The HHL Accelerator) Investors Day, where MAGNOTHERM met lead investor Extantia. This investment helped bridge the gap between research and a market-ready product. The connection to REWE was made through the Hessian Founder Award, where REWE was involved as a sponsor. Networks like these are invaluable for building trust with customers, partners and suppliers, especially when the technology is new and highly specialised.
For Timur Sirman, this work is about more than building a successful business. It is also about the sense of agency that comes with developing something tangible — and the knowledge that his team is helping make the technological backbone of entire industries more sustainable.
