SkyCool Systems: Sending Heat to Space to Cool the Planet. The world has a cooling problem.
Demand for air conditioning and refrigeration is growing fast. Data centers are multiplying. Summers are getting hotter. And traditional cooling systems are making it worse. They consume enormous amounts of electricity, rely on toxic refrigerants, and dump heat back into the air around us. Every air conditioner running at full power on a hot day contributes to making the next hot day even hotter.
SkyCool Systems was built on a different idea entirely. Instead of fighting heat, send it somewhere else. Specifically, to space.
The Science Is Older Than You Think
Thousands of years ago, people in desert regions made ice at night by leaving water in shallow pools under an open sky. The water radiated its heat upward into the cold of the atmosphere and froze, even in warm climates. No electricity. No refrigerants. Just physics.
Researchers at Stanford rediscovered this principle and took it further. They designed optical films that radiate heat directly to outer space, even during the day, and even under direct sunlight. The discovery led to one of the most cited papers in physics and a TED Talk that brought the concept to a global audience.
SkyCool turned that science into commercial products. Their technology works passively, with no compressors, no fans, no water consumption, and no ongoing electricity beyond a small pump. The company holds five or more patents on Passive Daytime Radiative Cooling going back to 2012 and has deployed across more than 30 real-world installations.
Two Products. Countless Applications.
SkyCool makes two core products, each targeting a different cooling challenge.
The SkyCool Panel works like a solar panel, but for cooling. Rooftop panels circulate water or glycol through a closed loop, passively rejecting heat from refrigeration and air conditioning systems. They are compatible with HFC, CO2, and water or glycol systems, making them easy to integrate with existing infrastructure.
Target has been one of SkyCool’s most vocal customers. They have deployed panels across 21 stores in California, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Nevada, and Texas. Their Director of Refrigeration put it simply: last summer, their CO2 site in Texas did not go supercritical once. In 2026, Target is expanding to 16 additional sites, including a new larger-format SkyCool Condenser pilot.
The SkyCool Roof is a thin film applied directly to rooftop surfaces. It keeps the roof cooler than the outside air, even under direct sunlight. The result is lower HVAC load, reduced energy bills, and a longer-lasting roof. In 2025 pilot results, one small Las Vegas warehouse had 20 tons of cooling load removed entirely. The roofers were stunned.
The Numbers Tell the Story
SkyCool closed 2025 at $3.33M in revenue. That represents 10x year-over-year commercial growth. Going into 2026, the company already has $4.2M in contracted backlog, with an additional approximately $2M in new grants.
Lineage Logistics, one of the world’s largest cold storage operators, is advancing from pilot to proof-of-enterprise in H2 2026. SkyCool Roof has signed its first Joint Development Agreement with a top U.S. commercial roofing manufacturer, with a second JDA expected to close shortly.
In the data center space, where AI is pushing cooling infrastructure to its limits, SkyCool has been named a 2026 BNEF Pioneers Finalist in the data center sustainability challenge, one of only 29 finalists selected globally. The company has also been shortlisted for a funded pilot sponsored by a major national lab and hosted by a leading U.S. data center infrastructure company. On top of that, the California Energy Commission has proposed a $1.8M grant to fund a 100,000 square foot SkyCool Roof demonstration project.
Built for What Comes Next
To lead commercial growth through this next phase, SkyCool has hired Michael Keating, a clean-tech veteran and former founder of Scoot, as Chief Commercial Officer. The company is now targeting a $10 to $15M Series A to accelerate revenue, advance its product and cost-down roadmaps, and expand manufacturing capacity with its supply partners.
The cooling industry is one of the largest contributors to global energy consumption and carbon emissions. SkyCool is not offering a modest upgrade to existing systems. It is offering a fundamentally different approach, one that works with the laws of physics rather than against them.
This is what category-defining climate technology looks like in the real world.
Congratulations to Eli A Goldstein and the entire SkyCool Systems team on an outstanding run of milestones.
