Given that a heat pump and an air conditioner are the same thing except for one valve, i assume this article is just corporate fluffvertising.

Technology Connections had an interesting primer on heat pumps not long ago on YouTube.

Hasn't Carrier made heat pumps for many years now? I thought I remembered them from the late 1980s.

Carrier has been making heat pumps for decades. This sounds a little bit like "Apple, inventor of the Macintosh computer, is moving on to smartphones."