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Property Management

Launch YC: Aether Energy - AI platform for rooftop solar

Aether is AI design and workflow software for solar installers.

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Background

Shelby Bons and Zayne Sagar are climate entrepreneurs with a mission to make rooftop solar energy accessible and cheap throughout the world. After speaking with hundreds of solar installers, they identified a critical gap: installers lack the tools to be successful. Aether was reimagined from the ground up to address this need by automating the repetitive work that slows down solar projects.

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The Problem

The biggest challenge in US rooftop solar is soft costs—non-hardware costs that account for more than 60% of the total installed system cost. Key contributors include:

  • Manual PV CAD design: Rooftop PV site designs are still built manually, which is time-consuming and error-prone. Mistakes require redoing plansets and permitting, adding $1k–$2k in extra costs.
  • Inaccurate production and consumption modeling: Most solar design tools provide only basic estimates suitable for sales pitches, not accurate projections. Consumers now demand better accuracy, and recent legal litigations are forcing more rigorous modeling.
  • Fragmented software stacks: Solar companies typically use 6–10 separate point solutions, creating chaotic workflows where deals get lost and projects are delayed.
  • Lack of project visibility: Teams cannot see the full picture across departments, leading to lost sales and project delays.

These issues add an estimated $5k–$7k in soft costs to a typical rooftop project.

The Solution

Aether streamlines the rooftop solar workflow end to end—similar to Procore or Veeva but built for solar with an AI twist. Solar companies can rapidly generate PV site designs, create beautiful PV proposals, and manage projects through installation in one simplified workflow.

Aether is organized into hubs that help specific roles collaborate with other teams using AI assistance.

Core innovations:

  • An in-house computer vision model for site analysis
  • A fine-tuned model trained on solar-specific data including system production data and vision model outputs

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The result is a unified AI platform with solar agents that streamline the entire workflow.

About the Founders

Shelby Bons studied Materials Science and Engineering at UC Berkeley and worked in Data Science and Machine Learning roles at Dolby Laboratories, Voltaiq, and Sunrun before founding Aether.

Zayne Sagar has worked across multiple climate-driven companies on space-based weather data and energy modeling. By age 28, he had built high-performing product and engineering teams from the ground up.

Get Started

Early adopter offer: Solar installers receive 50% off their current design tool cost.