heata is one of two winners of Pitch in Whitehall: Green Compute, alongside GoCodeGreen.
Pitch in Whitehall is a new approach to government procurement, run by Startup Coalition in partnership with the Government Digital Service. Instead of a long tender, startups pitch live on stage to win a pilot contract with government. Six startups made the final, and the plan was to appoint one winner. In the end the judges awarded two contracts.
Pitching the heata unit: a cloud server that retrofits to domestic hot water cylinders
The challenge
This round was about green compute. The question for startups was how the UK public sector can run AI and data-intensive workloads while reaching net zero carbon operations by 2030, reducing data vulnerabilities and improving cloud unit economics. Hardware that reuses waste heat was one of the areas the brief called out by name.
That's what we do. Our servers sit in people's homes, attached to their hot water cylinders. The heat from processing goes into the water instead of being cooled away, so there's no cooling energy to pay for and the household gets free hot water. For government, that means compute with a lower carbon footprint and a lower cost, which also helps families with their energy bills.
Startup Coalition opening the event
What happens next
The win comes with a pilot contract with government. We'll share more as the pilot takes shape.
Thank you
Thanks to Startup Coalition and the Government Digital Service for opening the door to startups, and to the judges, Sonia Patel, Antonia Whitecourt, Caroline Gorski and Bryan Nelson. Thank you also to Susannah Storey, Permanent Secretary at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, for presenting the prizes.
Congratulations to GoCodeGreen, and to our fellow finalists Zendo, Doubleword, DigiUsher, Report Zero and Greenpixie.
Finalists, judges and organisers after the awards
If you're in the public sector and want to talk about running your compute on the heata network, get in touch: sales@heata.co