Gyre Energy, an energy technology startup, has secured over £1 million in investment and grant funding as it expands work with larger enterprise customers. The pre-seed round, led by Speedinvest with participation from Rule 30 and Plug and Play, has funded Gyre's growth into large-scale cold chain environments, including one of the world's largest logistics companies responsible for moving and storing temperature-sensitive goods across global supply chains.
Cooling already accounts for around a fifth of global electricity demand, and rising temperatures are placing growing pressure on cold chains, buildings, power grids and cooling infrastructure. Gyre's AI-driven platform analyses how a site behaves, forecasts cooling demand, and optimises the system to cut overall energy use while maintaining temperature stability. Its thermal energy storage then stores cooling capacity when energy is cheaper and greener, releasing it during expensive peak periods so equipment runs less when power costs most, allowing cold storage and industrial cooling operators to improve cooling performance without major infrastructure replacement.
The funding supports Gyre's most significant deployment to date and its first with a global logistics leader. Gyre will install its cooling optimisation and thermal energy storage platform within a chamber of a 140,000 square foot cold chain operation, with performance measured against an IPMVP baseline. The customer cannot be named at this stage due to commercial confidentiality, but the project marks Gyre's first enterprise-scale deployment with a global logistics operator.
The International Energy Agency has warned that cooling demand is already straining power grids around the world, with global electricity demand expected to grow around 50% faster over 2026 to 2030 than the previous decade, driven by HVAC, data centres and electrification. As cooling demand rises across the economy, Gyre Energy sees future applications beyond cold storage, including data centres, where operators face increasing pressure to control energy use, manage heat and maintain uptime as AI workloads grow.
Gyre Energy has already demonstrated the commercial impact of its platform with a large UK chilled and frozen distribution business with a nationwide depot network. In its first published commercial deployment, Gyre cut electricity costs by 38% and daily energy consumption by 35%, with a payback period under 1.5 years, at a 2,900 sq ft frozen cold storage facility. Founded by Dougald Coulson (CEO), Michael McKenna (CTO) and Tom Gibson (COO), all three Oxford MBAs with backgrounds in machine learning, energy systems and energy technology commercialisation, Gyre Energy was recently named a SXSW London Venture Spotlight winner (2nd place), selected as a MIT Climate Solver from nearly 2,900 organisations globally, and awarded multiple Innovate UK grants.
Cooling already accounts for around a fifth of global electricity demand, and it's rapidly growing. For the operators we work with, energy is one of their largest costs and cooling is the part they've had the least control over. What's really resonating with our customers is that the same infrastructure that has historically been a cost line can become an energy asset. Working with one of the world's largest logistics operators gives us the opportunity to prove that approach in one of the most demanding cold chain environments in the world.
Cooling is one of the most fundamental and overlooked problems in the energy transition, and Gyre is tackling it head on. This is AI applied to the real world, delivering real outcomes in the shape of lower energy consumption and more resilient supply chains. In the twelve months since we invested, Dougald, Tom, Mike and the team have executed exceptionally, moving from proven first commercial deployment to working with one of the world's most sophisticated cold chain operators. Gyre is building a core layer of the energy stack of the future, and we're delighted to be on this journey with a team that is global by nature and unbounded in its ambition.
