The ritual is familiar to anyone who's contemplated electrifying their home: an afternoon surrendered to a contractor who measures doorways, scrutinizes ductwork, and promises a quote that may materialize in three days. Or seven. Or never.
Zero Homes thinks that friction alone is costing the residential electrification movement thousands of converts. The Denver startup's answer? An app that does the entire assessment remotely—no sales visit, no waiting around, no stranger in your basement tallying up square footage.
It's an audacious pitch in an industry that still runs largely on clipboard-wielding technicians and in-person handshakes. But Zero just pulled in $16.8 million in Series A funding to prove the model works, led by Prelude Ventures with backing from SJF Ventures, Watsco Ventures, and existing investors VoLo Earth and Overture VC. The round closed last month, just weeks after the company announced it was going statewide across Colorado.
Whether homeowners are ready to trust their phones over face-to-face consultations is the multimillion-dollar question Zero is now betting on.
Point, Shoot, Get a Quote
Here's how it works. You download the app. You walk through your house filming a video tour—living room, hallways, the spot where your ancient furnace wheezes in the basement. You photograph equipment nameplates, your utility meter, the electrical panel. Optionally, you grant access to utility data. What Zero calls a "digital twin" of your property takes shape on their servers.
Then their design team steps in, running what's known in the trade as ACCA Manual J load calculations—the industry-standard formula for sizing heating and cooling systems correctly. Within 24 hours, you get a fixed-price quote that folds in available rebates and tax credits. Accept it, and a vetted local contractor shows up to install, typically within two to three weeks.
Zero promises firm pricing. No post-install surprises, no "we didn't realize your ducts were shot" moments. In more complicated scenarios—solar integration, major insulation work, ductwork that needs serious surgery—they may schedule a pre-install walkthrough. But the core quote? That's generated sight unseen.
It sounds almost too clean. And in an industry notorious for cost overruns and scope creep, maybe it is. Then again, Zero secured something in January that lends the approach credibility: formal approval from the Air Conditioning Contractors of America for its Manual J methodology.
Industry Stamps of Approval (Sort Of)
Zero became the tenth company to receive ACCA Manual J certification, but it's the first designed explicitly for remote residential assessments rather than on-site technician tools. That matters. Manual J approval means Zero's load calculations meet the baseline standard most building codes and permit offices require. Without it, contractors can't legally pull permits in many jurisdictions.
The company also points to Department of Energy validation, though the details are a bit more nuanced than the headline suggests. According to Zero's 2024 year-in-review report, the DOE compared 25 in-home energy assessments against virtual assessments conducted through the platform. The finding: data quality was sufficient to generate official Home Energy Scores. Zero calls this the first validation of its kind for a remote tool, which appears accurate—though it's worth noting the sample size is modest and the DOE hasn't issued a formal endorsement.
Still, the startup has additional federal backing. A $200,000 DOE STTR Phase I grant is funding R&D work with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to develop integrated electrical load sizing tools. CEO Grant Gunnison, who previously ran his family's general contracting business and did stints at MIT and NASA, is embedded in NREL's West Gate Lab entrepreneurship program. That's not nothing.
The Economics of Skipping the Site Visit
Zero claims the remote process saves contractors more than three hours per bid and cuts project planning time by 90 percent. For homeowners, that efficiency translates to lower prices—10 to 15 percent on average, according to BusinessDen. Gunnison attributes the savings to eliminating what he says is 25 to 30 percent overhead typically eaten up by customer acquisition and in-home sales labor.
Whether those savings hold up at scale is an open question. The app carries a perfect 5.0 rating on the iOS App Store, though from just 14 reviews—a data set too small to draw firm conclusions. On EnergySage, where Zero is listed as an installer partner, one customer expressed surprise that a virtual quote worked "without anyone in my home." A handful of testimonials on Zero's website echo similar themes: quotes coming in 10 to 20 percent cheaper than competing bids, faster turnarounds, less hassle.
The platform is currently live in Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Illinois, and California. Expansion into additional states is planned through 2026, though the company hasn't specified which markets are next.
Catching a Wave (Maybe)
Zero is scaling up at a moment when heat pump adoption is genuinely accelerating. For the fourth straight year, U.S. heat pump shipments outpaced gas furnace sales in 2024, according to Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute data. The gap widened to 32 percent—more heat pumps than furnaces shipped nationwide.
Nine states have signed onto a memorandum of understanding targeting 65 percent heat pump market share by 2030 and 90 percent by 2040. Federal and state incentive programs, including Colorado's Home Energy Rebate Program, are funneling billions toward residential electrification. Demand is there. The question is whether the traditional HVAC sales model can keep up with it.
The industry's typical workflow doesn't inspire confidence. Homeowners juggle multiple contractor appointments, wait days or weeks for quotes, and frequently receive wildly inconsistent pricing or system recommendations. Zero's argument is straightforward: digitize the front end, clear the bottleneck, maintain design quality.
The company has piloted the approach through utility and municipal partnerships that suggest at least some institutional interest. The Exelon Foundation provided investment and in-kind support in 2024 to integrate Zero across six Exelon utilities. Tri-State Generation and Transmission offered free digital assessments to rural Colorado members. Massachusetts Clean Energy Center ran a decarbonization pilot with $10,000 to $30,000 incentives for participants using Zero's remote process.
The Competition Is Watching
Other digital-first HVAC players are circling the same opportunity, though they're taking different approaches. ServiceTitan acquired Conduit Tech last September, bringing LiDAR-powered onsite 3D modeling into its contractor workflow software—though Conduit targets technicians, not homeowners directly. Regional outfits like Elephant Energy and VoltHub offer online quoting for specific markets or product lines.
What distinguishes Zero, at least in theory, is the consumer-initiated, fully remote model. No in-person touchpoint until the install. No contractor showing up to "verify measurements" before providing real pricing. It's a cleaner user experience if it works—and a potential liability if remote assessments miss something critical in older or architecturally complex homes.
That's the risk the $16.8 million Series A is meant to mitigate. Zero now has runway to test its assumptions across broader geographies, more varied housing stock, and markets where contractor capacity may be thinner. Whether enough homeowners are comfortable making a five-figure purchase decision based on smartphone photos remains an unanswered question.
For now, Zero is live in five states. The design software has industry approval. The funding is deposited. What happens next depends less on technology than on human behavior—whether people will pull out their phones instead of waiting for the sales rep to show up.
In an industry that's moved glacially toward digitization, that might be the hardest sell of all.
