The Tesla veteran who helped build the iconic “octovalve” is now betting big on home heating. Meet Sadi Thermal Machines.
Drew Baglino doesn’t slow down.
Less than two years after quietly walking out of Tesla — where he spent nearly two decades shaping some of the company’s most critical energy technologies — the former Senior Vice President has already built one startup and is now quietly building a second.
That second company is called Sadi Thermal Machines, and it’s going after one of the most overlooked corners of the clean energy transition: the heat pump.
A Stealthy Launch With a Big Name Behind It
Company filings in Delaware and California confirm that Sadi Thermal Machines was incorporated in June 2025. It operates out of Scotts Valley, California — the same address as Baglino’s first post-Tesla venture, Heron Power, a solid-state transformer startup that raised $140 million earlier this year.
The name itself is a quiet nod to history. Sadi is a reference to Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot, the 19th-century French physicist whose foundational work in thermodynamics laid the groundwork for both the internal combustion engine and — fittingly — the modern heat pump.
Baglino has not made any public statements about the company. Neither he nor Heron Power’s PR firm responded to requests for comment.
Why Heat Pumps? Because Baglino Already Knows How to Build Them.
This isn’t a pivot into unfamiliar territory. Baglino is a named inventor on a Tesla patent for a thermal management system that uses two coolant loops — one for the battery, one for drivetrain components — controlled through a network of three-way and four-way valves.
That work fed directly into Tesla’s “octovalve”, the sophisticated thermal management system that debuted in the Model Y. At roughly the size of a suitcase, it simultaneously manages cabin comfort, battery temperature, and motor heat — and it was ahead of every competitor when it launched.
In short, Baglino helped solve the hardest version of the heat pump problem: squeezing maximum performance into minimum space, under extreme weight and power constraints, for a moving vehicle.
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A home heat pump? By comparison, that’s a more forgiving engineering challenge.
He Said It on a Tesla Earnings Call — Now He’s Doing It
The most remarkable part of this story may be how publicly Baglino telegraphed this move — years before he made it.
During Tesla’s Q4 2021 earnings call in January 2022, Baglino and CEO Elon Musk fielded a question about whether Tesla would build a residential heat pump. Baglino’s answer was pointed:
“We have learned a lot about how to make capable and reliable heat pumps that work in all environmental conditions and are excited about the idea of working on that problem one day.”
Musk, characteristically, added a caveat: “It is a thing we will do, but we’re not committing to a time frame.”
Tesla never did it.
Then Baglino closed with a line that, in hindsight, reads almost like a personal promise: “People should do it anyway.”
With Sadi Thermal Machines, he apparently decided to be one of those people.
The Bigger Picture: A Veteran Chasing the Gap Tesla Left Open
Baglino left Tesla in April 2024 during a wave of high-profile layoffs that reshaped the company’s leadership. He had risen from early engineer — working on the original Roadster — to SVP overseeing electric motors, batteries, power electronics, and energy storage products including the Powerwall and Powerpack.
That resume gives Sadi Thermal Machines immediate credibility in a market that is heating up fast — no pun intended. Heat pumps are central to global decarbonization efforts, capable of delivering two to four times more energy as heat than they consume in electricity. Yet residential adoption in the U.S. remains sluggish, held back by cost, installer knowledge gaps, and hardware that underperforms in cold climates.
Several Tesla alumni are believed to have joined Baglino at the new company, according to LinkedIn and a source familiar with the startup — suggesting he’s assembling a team with serious thermal engineering muscle.
What Comes Next
Details about Sadi Thermal Machines’ product direction, funding status, and timeline remain unknown. The company has no public website and has made no announcements.
But the pattern is clear. Baglino left Tesla with deep expertise, a strong network, and unfinished business. Heron Power tackled the grid. Sadi Thermal Machines is taking aim at the building.
If his track record is any guide, this is worth watching closely.
