Nabors Industries Backs Quaise Energy With $35 Million as Series B Closes at $180 Million
The drilling giant's equity stake signals oilfield services sees a path to commercial superhot geothermal, ahead of Project Obsidian's first drilling results.
Quaise Energy closed its Series B at $180 million in early September (week of 2026-08-31), with $35 million of that total coming from Nabors Industries, the oilfield drilling heavyweight.7 The Houston-based startup is developing millimeter-wave technology to reach superhot rock formations at depths beyond conventional rotary drilling, and the company said the raise signals "deep conviction across a wide range of investors."7
Nabors is not a venture fund betting on a concept. It is an established drilling services company that sells equipment and crews into oil and gas basins worldwide. Its decision to write a $35 million check into an early-stage geothermal startup suggests at least one major oilfield services player sees a viable commercial application for the technology — and potentially a future revenue stream in drilling contracts.7
The Series B close follows an earlier tranche of $134 million announced on Tuesday (2026-07-07), which brought total company funding to $230 million at that point.3 Quaise is separately seeking $100 million in grants and debt to finance Project Obsidian, its first superhot geothermal power plant in central Oregon.3 Equity is in place; the grant and debt piece is not.
Offtake is further along than many early-stage projects. The company has already signed a power-purchase agreement for an initial 50 MW with an undisclosed customer, and is working to ink deals for an additional 200 MW of future capacity.3 Signed PPAs give lenders a revenue anchor. Without them, project financing for an unproven drilling method would be nearly impossible to close.
Japanese utility JERA invested through its corporate venture arm, JERA Ventures, and the two companies are exploring deployment in Japan.4 Quaise has identified the United States and Japan as focus markets for the technology.4 JERA is one of the world's largest LNG buyers and operates substantial thermal generation capacity; its involvement goes beyond a financial return bet, since it is looking for firm, dispatchable power to complement intermittent renewables in a market with limited domestic fuel supply.
The technology's theoretical upside is substantial. Researchers estimate that tapping 1% of the world's superhot rock could meet global electricity demand eight times over.1 But geothermal currently provides only around 1% of renewable electricity generation worldwide.1 The gap is not for want of ambition.
In the United States, roughly 4 GW of geothermal capacity is spread across 99 plants, more than half located in California, supplying just 0.4% of national electricity generation.5 The sector has operated at roughly that scale for years. Next-generation firms are arguing the bottleneck is drilling cost and reach, not resource availability — which is precisely where Quaise's millimeter-wave approach is meant to intervene.
The broader next-generation sector has seen a capital markets milestone this year. Fervo Energy became the first next-generation geothermal company to go public, in May (2026-05-29), raising approximately $1.9 billion.3 A listed comparable changes how private-round valuations get benchmarked, and Quaise's $180 million close comes against that backdrop of rising investor familiarity with the category.
Geothermal development faces recurring non-technical obstacles that financial closes do not resolve. In Southeast Asia, Indonesia and the Philippines hold the world's second and third largest installed geothermal capacity, yet financial constraints, permitting delays, and local community opposition have persistently slowed project development there.2 Project Obsidian will face its own version of those hurdles in Oregon.
A separate, much smaller experiment is also taking shape in the region. A Seattle startup plans to deploy a 100-kilowatt geothermal generator to the seafloor off Oregon's coast in September (2026-09), targeting hydrothermal vents with temperatures reaching 750 degrees Fahrenheit.6 The scale is nowhere near Quaise's 50 MW PPA, but it underlines how many approaches are competing for capital and attention in geothermal right now.
For Quaise, the $100 million in grants and debt still being sought for Project Obsidian is the next concrete test. Equity investors have committed. Public lenders and project finance desks have not yet signalled the same. Drilling results from Oregon will be the first technical data point — and the one that will settle, or deepen, the uncertainty around the millimeter-wave method.3