Former Tesla executive Drew Baglino has quietly founded a heat pump startup, TechCrunch has revealed.
This is the second company Baglino has founded in the two years since he left Tesla. Sources confirmed the existence of a startup called Sadi Thermal Machines, and TechCrunch reviewed company filings in Delaware and California.
Sadi was founded in June 2025 and shares its headquarters in Scotts Valley, California with Heron Power, a startup founded by Baglino that sells solid-state transformers.
The company’s name likely comes from Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot, the pioneering French physicist who formed the basis of modern thermodynamics, including the internal combustion engine and heat pumps. Little is known about Sadi Thermal Machines, but the company appears to have hired several Tesla graduates, according to LinkedIn reviews and sources familiar with the startup.
TechCrunch was unable to contact the PR firm representing Baglino or Heron Power. This article will be updated if we receive a response.
Before founding Heron Power and Sadi Thermal Machines, Baglino spent nearly 20 years at Tesla, working on everything from the original Roadster to the Powerwall and Powerpack energy storage systems. When Baglino left Tesla in April 2024, he was promoted to senior vice president, overseeing the development of the company’s core energy technologies, including electric motors, batteries and power electronics.
Along the way, Baglino worked on Tesla’s heat pumps. He is cited as the inventor of a patent for a thermal management system that operates two coolant loops. One cools the battery and the other cools the drivetrain components.
To manage the two loops, Baglino and his team developed three-way and four-way valves that allow the EV’s thermal management system to more precisely control the temperature of various components. For example, these systems allow Tesla to harvest heat from traction motors and use it to warm up the battery, ensuring optimal performance during fast charging in cold weather.
This patent lays out some of the design principles that form the basis of Tesla’s “octo-valve” system, which first appeared in the Model Y. The vehicle’s heat pump manages the temperatures of the cabin, battery, and motor, all in a package about the size of a suitcase.
When Tesla debuted, its Octovalve system was more advanced than its competitors, and for at least a short period of time, the company considered developing heat pumps for residential and commercial environments. Tesla executives, including Baglino and CEO Elon Musk, pondered such a system during their 2022 earnings call. They discussed heat pumps that can handle both HVAC and water heating.
“From a mission standpoint, it’s very aligned,” Baglino said. “We’ve learned a lot about how to create capable, reliable heat pumps that work in all environmental conditions, and we’re excited about the idea of solving that problem one day. It’s certainly aligned with our mission to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy, so to speak.”
He added that it would be easier to make a home heat pump. “It’s much more difficult in a car,” he said. “Mass, volume and energy are too limited.”
But Musk added one of his famous qualifiers: “This is something we will do, but we don’t have a time frame at this point,” he said. Tesla has not yet released a residential HVAC or hot water heating system.
“People have to do it anyway,” Baglino said on the call. With Sadi Thermal Machines, he appears ready to put those words to good use.
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