A roof that gets colder under sunlight. A paint that cools a building without electricity. A startup that turned a laser-lab theory into a factory product sold to Amazon, Volkswagen, and AB InBev.

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The Material That Gets Colder in the Sun — The Physics Startup Redefining Cooling with Yaron Shenhav

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The Material That Gets Colder in the Sun — The Physics Startup Redefining Cooling with Yaron Shenhav

Haggai Klorman Eraqi

Oct 24, 2025

🎙 Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.

A roof that gets colder under sunlight. A paint that cools a building without electricity. A startup that turned a laser-lab theory into a factory product sold to Amazon, Volkswagen, and AB InBev.

That’s not sci-fi—it’s SolCold, and it’s the kind of “impossible” physics that only becomes real when someone refuses to quit.

When Yaron Shenhav was a master’s student in electronic engineering, he couldn’t shake a paradox: why do we burn energy to create cold? That thought—plus an overheated apartment—sparked a decade-long obsession that became a new class of nanoparticle coatings. These materials absorb sunlight and emit higher-frequency light back out, releasing heat in the process. In other words, they cool themselves with sunlight.

Today, Yaron’s company has grown from a crazy idea to a $14M-funded deep-tech startup with 27 employees and global pilots. SolCold’s film-like coating has been tested on rooftops, containers, beer silos, and even car sunroofs—cutting temperatures, saving energy, and keeping systems online during heat waves.

In this episode, Yaron and Haggai dive into the science, the near-death startup moments, and the mindset required to push physics into production. They unpack how SolCold went from crowdfunding in Israel to cooling Amazon warehouses, Volkswagen vehicles, and global breweries—and why lowering the world’s temperature might start with a thin sheet of film.

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