Christian Deilmann co-founded tado with Johannes Schwarz and Valentin Sawadski in Munich in September 2011. He is the company's chief product officer. The founders built the product around one idea: the heating should know when you are coming home.
tado Heating reached customers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland in November 2012. The UK launch followed in 2013. The hard part was Europe's mix of boilers, so the team built one box that worked with thousands of systems. By 2014 it could control more than 5,000 heating systems. In July 2014 Target Partners and Shortcut Ventures led a €10 million round.
In June 2015 tado launched Smart AC Control in Europe and the US, with an event in New York. In August 2017 it added Google Assistant voice control. By 2022 the company had sold more than 3 million thermostats.
In January 2022 tado announced a SPAC deal with GFJ ESG at about €450 million, later cut to about €400 million. The deal was cancelled in September 2022. Deilmann said current public capital market conditions were the reason. In January 2023 tado raised €43 million from Trill Impact Ventures, Bayern Kapital, Kiko Ventures and Swisscanto.