Quaise Energy Closes $180 Million Series B With Nabors Industries Backing Oregon Geothermal Project
Nabors Industries' $35 million stake anchors Quaise's $180 million Series B close as the startup advances its first commercial superhot geothermal plant.
Quaise Energy closed the final tranche of its Series B round during the week of September 1 (2026-09-01), bringing total equity raised in the round to $180 million and adding drilling contractor Nabors Industries as a $35 million investor, Oilprice.com reported.5
The Nabors commitment carries more operational significance than a typical venture check. Quaise's core technology replaces conventional drill bits with millimeter-wave energy to vaporize rock, targeting formation temperatures that standard rigs cannot economically reach. Nabors is one of North America's largest contract drillers and has direct financial interest in seeing the approach validated at commercial scale. Its participation gives Quaise access to drilling expertise that no amount of equity financing alone can substitute.5
Quaise had announced a $134 million first tranche of the Series B on Tuesday (2026-07-07), bringing its total cumulative funding across all rounds to $230 million, Canary Media reported. The $180 million figure disclosed at final close represents the Series B equity total, with the July tranche constituting the larger portion.2
The target is Project Obsidian, a superhot geothermal power plant planned for central Oregon. Quaise has signed a power-purchase agreement for an initial 50 megawatts with an undisclosed buyer and is working to contract an additional 200 megawatts of prospective capacity, Canary Media said. On top of the Series B, the company is pursuing $100 million in grants and debt — meaning the full project financing stack for Obsidian is still being assembled.2
Japan is in the frame as a parallel market. JERA Co., through its corporate venture arm JERA Ventures, has invested in Quaise, and the two companies will explore deploying the technology in Japan, Asian Power reported. JERA is among Japan's largest power generators, sitting on a market with some of the world's densest volcanic geothermal resource but also significant permitting and community-acceptance constraints that have historically slowed conventional geothermal development.3
The fundraise lands during a visible shift in institutional appetite for advanced geothermal. Fervo Energy, another next-generation developer, went public in May (2026) and netted approximately $1.9 billion — the first IPO by any next-generation geothermal firm, Canary Media noted. Oilprice.com attributed part of the broader capital influx to AI-driven data center load growth pushing developers and utilities toward firm, weather-independent generation sources, though the direct link between data center forecasts and individual project finance decisions involves intervening steps that are not publicly documented.2,5
The scale of the addressable resource explains the investor interest, even if commercial delivery remains several years out. Researchers estimate tapping 1% of the world's superhot rock resources could supply global electricity demand eight times over, according to RenewEconomy. But geothermal currently accounts for roughly 1% of global renewable electricity generation, the same source reported — a ratio that reflects how difficult accessing high-temperature resources at depth has historically been.1
The US base from which Quaise is scaling is narrow. The country has approximately 4 gigawatts of geothermal capacity across 99 plants, more than half in California, and together they supply about 0.4% of total US electricity generation, according to Ormat and Canary Media reporting.4
Quaise's central argument is that millimeter-wave drilling turns what has been a geology-constrained resource — conventional geothermal requires surface proximity to heat anomalies — into something deployable at depth almost anywhere. That argument has not been tested at commercial scale. Project Obsidian will be the first real proof point. Whether the company can close the remaining $100 million in grants and debt financing, and convert the 200 megawatts of prospective PPA discussions into signed offtake contracts, will reveal how the project finance community is actually pricing execution risk on technology that has so far been demonstrated only in the lab.2,5