New startup ideas · Physical world · Climate and energy
startup idea
Kilobid
Licensed AI agent that bids your home battery, EV and thermostat into wholesale power markets.
Kilobid is a consumer app that links a household's utility account, battery, EV charger and thermostat through existing APIs, then runs an agent that decides hour by hour when to charge, hold or discharge and submits those decisions into wholesale and utility program markets.
- AI agent as a service
- Consumer
- $10-100B market
- Creates a new category
- US first
4/5
venture judge
1
similar startups, last 2 years (13 all-time)
96%
of 4 nearest real companies still alive
yes
8 matching federal grants and programs
Direction supported by government programs and grants
Scorecard
One score that balances how trendy the idea is, the demand for it and its potential for 100x, with competition measured relative to every other idea in the catalog. Recent startup trends first, government priorities second.
88
Idea Score, 0-100 · raw 53.6 x 1.64
Warm
competition: more crowded than 20% of ideas · headwind x0.90
+2.9
government priorities, secondary (18 matching grants)
Trend
42
Is the wave forming now? 2025-26 entrants vs 2023-24, rounds since 2025, the sector's live-batch direction, the 2026 trend analyst.
- Entrants 2025-26 vs 2023-24 (similar companies)23
- Rounds announced 2025+ in the sector68
- Sector direction (live batch)50
- 2026 trend analyst25
Demand
75
Does anyone want it? YC's current RFS, companies already paid for something similar, the operator judge, founders' yes-rate in decks, readers who would run the test.
- YC asks for it (current RFS: idea / sector)100
- Someone already pays (similar companies, recent / all-time)100
- Operator judge: real pain25
100x potential
58
Can it return a fund? The venture judge (double weight), market-size and moat axes, neighbours still alive, the technologist judge.
- Venture judge75
- Market size axis67
- Moat axis80
- Neighbours still alive24
- Technologist judge25
Score = 100 x cbrt(Trend x Demand x 100x) x (1 - 0.5 x crowding) + government bonus (max 5), calibrated so the 95th-percentile idea scores 90 (order never changes). A geometric mean: a weak pillar cannot be papered over. Percentiles are among the 272 ideas in the catalog; the terms matched were licensed, bids, home, battery, thermostat, wholesale, power, consumer.
The idea in full
- What
- Kilobid is a consumer app that links a household's utility account, battery, EV charger and thermostat through existing APIs, then runs an agent that decides hour by hour when to charge, hold or discharge and submits those decisions into wholesale and utility program markets. Kilobid itself holds the ISO market participant registration and the state-level retail and aggregator licenses, so the household never files anything; it signs up in ten minutes and takes a monthly payout. Revenue is a share of dispatch earnings plus a flat subscription, with no hardware on Kilobid's balance sheet.
- Why now
- Two of the last three YC energy companies in this cluster, NODI Energy (yc X25) and Voxel Energy (yc W26), are funded to route distributed and repurposed battery capacity to data centers, which means the buy side for household flexibility now exists; meanwhile the 2022 graveyard entries Pelm (Plaid for utilities) and Jasmine Energy (claim solar incentives with AI) show that selling utility plumbing or incentive paperwork without holding the market license never reached the money.
- Wedge: first customer and entry point
- Homeowners in one deregulated ISO with an already installed battery, acquired through installer referral, paid out on a single program before any second market is added.
- Path to 100x
- US residential electricity and the flexibility programs attached to it are a tens of billions of dollars market, and a household-side market participant is a category that does not exist today because licensing has kept it institutional. Whoever holds licenses across the most ISOs and states becomes the default counterparty every installer and OEM plugs into, and licenses plus enrolled fleet compound faster than a new entrant can replicate.
- Ceiling
- Utilities and OEMs bundle their own aggregation for free with the hardware, leaving Kilobid only the shrinking pool of mixed-brand homes.
- Closest real companies, as the generator saw them
- NODI Energy and Voxel Energy aggregate distributed capacity for data center offtake, not for households; Astro (yc W25) is an AI developer for projects, not a consumer counterparty; WattShift sells rate and price signal data, which Kilobid consumes rather than resells; Leafpress and Jasmine Energy died as unlicensed software layers.
- Main risk
- Per household dispatch revenue stays too small to cover acquisition cost before enough assets are enrolled to matter.
Five judges
Each judge scores every idea in the catalog with a named rubric; the venture judge decides whether a card is shown at all (4-5 is venture-grade).
Venture investor
4/5
Holding ISO and state licenses households cannot get is a compounding regulatory moat over a tens-of-billions flexibility market, at software margins.
Bootstrapper
2/5
Holding ISO market participant registration plus state aggregator licenses is a long regulatory path with tiny per household dispatch revenue behind it.
Operator
2/5
A homeowner's pain is a slightly high bill, not a budget line, and Kilobid asks them to hand over battery control for a small monthly payout.
Technologist
2/5
The wedge is ISO registration and state licenses over existing device APIs, not technology, and OEMs can bundle aggregation in one firmware release.
Risk
4/5
Holding the ISO participant registration and state aggregator licenses itself is the exact footing Pelm and Jasmine Energy lacked.
trends
2/5
Climate-energy fell to 1% of YC S26 and licensed household aggregation was equally pitchable in 2023; no dated shift opens this window.
Similar startups in the directory
Companies whose pitch matches most of the idea's terms (licensed, bids, home, battery, thermostat, wholesale, power, consumer): 13 all-time, 1 from the last two years. Same matching as Idea Check.
Scalable, Long-Lifetime Grid Energy Storage
Virtual power plant for consumers' smart device installations
First all-in-one home energy trading platform, enabled by seamless lego-like power system
Reselling marketplace for social media entrepreneurs in Pakistan
Building Shein of Home: tech-driven, design-mfr Home Lifestyle Brand
We deliver affordable renewable energy direct to customers and are…
Provider of an outside-the-home services marketplace intended to connect consumers with professionals. The company's services include recurring mowing, yard clean-ups, seeding, mulching, weeding, and snow clearing among others, enabling customers to book services instantly, using an artificial intelligence-powered satellite mapping tool, or request competitive quotes from top-rated crews nearby
Doblet solves the phone battery problem. We're building the first…
On-demand smartphone repair in 3 countries and launching smart home…
Plunk’s advanced analytics revolutionize the way homeowners, home experts, and investors value and invest in residential real estate—through the power of AI, Machine Learning and image analysis.
Credible is challenging the status quo by giving power to the consumer by creating a marketplace where users can compare personalized, prequalified rates and quotes from multiple lenders and carriers, for student loans, mortgages, personal loans, and insurance. We believe in a world where ‘ethical’, ‘lending’, and ‘insurance’ can coexist, and on a mission to help people find the best loan or insurance policy possible. We've created the only unbiased loan and insurance buying process, to make the search straightforward and clear.
An innovator and market leader in the development and commercialization of solid-state electrolyte and battery technologies.
The generator's reference companies
Real companies the model named as closest when it wrote the card, with their fate. A check mark is a company the radar could verify in its directory.
Public money in this direction
US federal grants, SBIR/STTR awards and open opportunities from the radar's public-money feed, matched to the idea's terms; the sector totals give the context.
8
grants and programs matching the idea
180
startup-relevant grants in Climate and energy
$155M
awarded in the sector, tracked
19
opportunities open now in the sector
National Science Foundation · SBIR Phase I · $305K · posted 2026-06-23
- I-Corps: Translation Potential of an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-Powered Materials Characterization Platform for Automated Microscopy and Spectroscopy Analyticsawardhigh relevance
National Science Foundation · I-Corps · $50K · posted 2026-08-19
- I-Corps: Translation Potential of Cross-Platform Wearable Interface for Spatial and Ambient Computingawardhigh relevance
National Science Foundation · I-Corps · $50K · posted 2026-08-17
- Development of a Novel Pediatric LVAD for Home Discharge of Children Awaiting Heart Transplantawardhigh relevance
NIH / NHLBI · SBIR phase II · $1M · posted 2026-08-10
- I-Corps: Translation potential of an Artificial Intelligence-driven electricity market optimization platformawardhigh relevance
National Science Foundation · I-Corps · $50K · posted 2026-07-17
- Developing a Learning Platform to Support Minimally Verbal Individuals with Autismawardhigh relevance
NIH / NIDCD · STTR phase I · $313K · posted 2026-07-01
- Lateral Flow-Electrochemiluminescent (LF-ECL) Test Strips and Portable Reader for Ultrasensitive Foodborne Pathogen Detectionawardhigh relevance
NIH / NCEZID · SBIR phase II · $1M · posted 2025-09-30
NIH / NIMH · SBIR phase II · $861K · posted 2025-08-01
Market signal
What the radar sees in Climate and energy: new companies by cohort year, the forming YC batch, and outcomes since the February snapshot.
Climate and energy · 92 → 112 → 184 → 97 → 32 new companies 2022 → 2026 · 91% aliveYC S26: 2 in this cluster, 1% of the batch (was 1% in X26) (F26 is still forming: 21 listed)Since February, of 118 YC companies here: 0 acquired, 2 shut down, 4 rewrote their pitch
Design attributes
The card is one cell of a designed set: every axis below was chosen before the text was written, and the text had to realize it.
- Buyer
- Consumer
- Business model
- AI agent as a service
- Path to 100x
- Creates a new category
- Market size
- $10-100B market
- Capital intensity
- Capital-light (software margins)
- Speed to revenue
- Revenue in 1-3 years
- Technical depth
- Real engineering
- Go-to-market
- Self-serve
- Moat
- License or regulatory moat
- Geography
- US first
- Regulation
- Heavily regulated
- Vibe
- Hot space
Listed under
An idea sits in its own sector and in any sector its text clearly touches.
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Fictional company written 2026-08-22 from MarkosWeb data; the companies, grants and numbers around it are real and tracked. Treat the idea as a research prompt, not a plan.