Instead of one large facility, the model puts company-owned compute racks across many host sites, operated remotely as a single virtual data centre. Each site contributes what a data centre would otherwise have to build: a connection, a space, and somewhere for the heat to go.
GPU capacity offered for AI training, inference and rendering through compute marketplaces and direct B2B contracts, allocated against committed demand. This is the business; the heat is what makes it cheaper to run than the alternative.
Recovered heat sold to the host building at 10–20% below its current heat price, under long-term offtake agreements. Priced against the host's own bill rather than a published tariff, so the discount holds whether the building is on district heat, gas or oil.
The capital model is straightforward: HeatLoop funds racks, compute hardware and heat-node build-out, and carries maintenance and electricity as operating cost. Host sites contribute space and connection rather than capital, which is what keeps the deployment cycle short compared with building a facility.
Compute demand is global. GPU-as-a-service is estimated at roughly $5bn in 2024–25 and growing fast, and EU-hosted capacity carries an additional advantage for customers with data-residency requirements.
Heat demand is local. Estonian district heating alone supplies several TWh a year. Our addressable slice is narrower than that headline — commercial buildings and light industry with year-round hot-water demand, currently on district heat, gas, oil or resistive electric heating.
Nord Pool day-ahead results, twelve months to June 2026. Heat prices are the Competition Authority's approved ceilings, network by network — the full table is here. Prices ex-VAT. Figures are historical and not a forecast.
We assess the building against its own metering — heat demand, electrical headroom, plant-room space and the circuit we would connect to.
The node is sized to the load we can reliably cover. Price, term and metering are fixed in writing before any hardware is ordered.
HeatLoop funds and installs the rack, cooling loop, heat exchanger and networking, then commissions the loop into the live building circuit.
Racks are run remotely as one fleet. Delivered heat is metered and billed; compute is scheduled around electricity prices and grid signals.
HeatLoop is privately held and privately funded. Racks and heat nodes are financed by the company rather than by the host. Growth is funded from equity, with Estonian and EU innovation-programme co-funding intended as a complement, and capital is raised against agreed deployments rather than ahead of them. The current funding position and the full financial model are available on request.
The commercial case rests on twelve months of Estonian electricity and heat-market data, assembled from metered building consumption and published market results rather than vendor estimates. Candidate host sites are assessed against their own metering before any offer is made, which is also why we can say plainly where the model does not work.
For the full business plan, financial model or the underlying market data, get in touch directly.
info@heatloop.com
A decentralised data centre — heat-recovery compute racks installed inside the buildings that need the heat.
