Mary-Ann Rau, formerly an Apple AirPods engineer, launched Merino Energy with the Merino Mono heat pump—a simplified single-unit design costing $3,800 with one-hour installation. The product targets California's heat pump adoption gap, addressing cost and installation time barriers that have stalled progress toward meeting a 6M-unit 2030 target.
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Why a former AirPods engineer is now building heat pumps
Former AirPods engineer Mary-Ann Rau launches Merino Energy with a $3,800 heat pump featuring one-hour installation, directly targeting California's cost and time barriers to reaching 6 million units by 2030.
Tuesday, April 7, 2026 12:00 PM UTC2 MIN READSOURCE: TechCrunchBY sys://pipeline
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