It’s that time of year. “Hot enough to fry an egg on this sidewalk” will be being bandied about here and there. It’s summer. It happens. But you know what’s hot all year round…? Geothermal energy. And it’s hot enough to do any number of things. Which is why Quaise Energy has garnered $144 million in venture funding to explore it. And they’re exploring that potential in Central Oregon at Newberry Volcano.
Quaise Energy has raised $144 million in a Series B round led by Prelude Ventures, Bloomberg reported on July 7. The MIT spinout plans to pour the money into a drilling method that looks nothing like a standard oil rig. Instead of grinding through rock with a bit, Quaise fires millimeter waves from a gyrotron, essentially vaporizing stone as it bores toward superhot supercritical rock formations far below where conventional geothermal wells stop. Reach those depths, and you get a heat source dense enough to run a power plant continuously, no sun, no wind, no batteries required.
The company’s first commercial target sits south of Bend, Oregon, near Newberry Volcano, an active volcanic complex that stretches roughly 75 miles across. Quaise calls the project Obsidian, and it’s being built in two phases: a 50 megawatt first stage aimed at commercial operation by 2030, followed by an expansion to 250 megawatts. Bloomberg reported that Quaise has already signed a hyperscaler as a customer for that first 50 megawatts, evidence that buyers racing to power AI data centers aren’t waiting for geothermal drilling to fully mature before locking in supply.
For more, see “Quaise Energy raises $144 million to drill for superhot geothermal power.”
(And you’re welcome for me resisting the Supa Hot Fire gif until now)
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