From the research lab to the market.
Research rarely fails on the physics. It stalls on the way out of the lab — between a working result and something that survives a field deployment, an engineering team, or a market. Wattli works in that distance: developing technology, consulting and teaching, and investing, in power electronics, electrification and agentic AI.
Research proves it works. That is not the same as it working.
A result that holds on a lab bench has cleared maybe half the distance. The other half is the unglamorous part: an enclosure that survives a rainy season, firmware that updates itself when nobody can drive out to the site, a tool an engineering team can actually run on a Monday morning.
That second half is where most research stops — and where Wattli starts. The three activities below are three ways of covering the same distance: prototypes into products, methods into companies, capital into the teams doing it.
Three ways across the gap.
Technology Development
Prototypes into products. DC microgrid hardware, remote monitoring for rural electrification, and agentic AI software — carried from concept through to hardware that has been built and measured, and software that has shipped.
See the projects 02Consulting & Teaching
Methods into companies. For the design that has plateaued on efficiency, size or cost, and the AI workflow that needs an honest technical read — handed over as a working prototype your team can run.
How we work 03Investments
Capital into teams. Selective stakes in technology startups making the same move — typically early, always hands-on.
More on investmentsThe work, where it actually runs.
Hardware developed with Hochschule Luzern – Technik & Architektur and taken out to the places it has to run. Not renderings, and not a lab bench — the built thing, on the ground, with a meter attached.
Almost everything that decides whether a design works shows up out here: the heat, the dust, the battery that is not the one in the datasheet, the connector that has to be right first time.
Where the depth is.
Depth over breadth — plus the teaching and applied-research supervision that keeps new results coming.
- Power electronics
- Electrification
- Agentic AI workflows
- Embedded control & firmware
- DC microgrids
- Off-grid PV systems
- Simulation tooling
- Teaching & seminars
- Applied research supervision
Capital into teams making the same move.
Wattli takes selective stakes in technology startups — typically early, typically in or adjacent to the domains above, and typically where an engineering opinion is worth more to the founders than the cheque.
This is a small and deliberately unhurried part of what Wattli does. If you are building something in electrification, power electronics or applied AI, the door is open.
Founded on the research side.
Wattli was founded by Dr. Jonas Mühlethaler — PhD in power electronics from ETH Zürich, co-founder of the simulation company Gecko-Simulations, professor at Hochschule Luzern, and seminar instructor at APEC since 2012. The research background that runs through this site starts there; the projects are built with the partners named alongside them.
Tell us what is stuck.
A short description of the problem is enough to start: what is stuck, and what has already been tried. Write in English or German — whichever you think in. Replies within 24 hours.
Building something and looking for a technical shareholder instead? A short note on what you are building does the same job — same address.
info@watt.li