CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Quaise Energy, the company unlocking terawatt-scale geothermal, announced today the closing of a $40M Series A financing round led by Safar Partners with participation from Prelude Ventures, Fine Structure Ventures, The Engine, Collaborative Fund, Nabors Energy Transition Ventures, and others. Safar Partners’ Arunas Chesonis and Mark Cupta from Prelude Ventures have joined Quaise Energy's Board of Directors as part of the financing.
Geothermal is the only renewable, clean source of energy capable of providing baseload power at the scale of the energy transition.
Quaise Energy plans to harness deep geothermal by introducing millimeter wave drilling systems capable of reaching depths between 10-20 km. At these depths, geothermal energy is power-dense, virtually unlimited, and available everywhere on the planet.
“A rapid transition to clean energy is one of the biggest challenges faced by humanity,” said Arunas Chesonis, Managing Partner of Safar Partners. “Geothermal energy can provide a lot more power using fewer resources. We have to approach the clean energy transition from both of those angles. Quaise's solution makes us optimistic for a future where clean, renewable energy will secure the future of our planet.”
The funding will be used to accelerate product development. The company will build field-deployable drilling machines to demonstrate the capabilities of this novel drilling technology in the field by 2024. It will also expand its multi-disciplinary teams based in Boston, Houston, and Cambridge, UK, doubling its number of engineers and creating new roles to refine and execute its commercialization strategy.
"This funding round brings us closer to providing clean, renewable baseload energy," said Carlos Araque, CEO and co-founder of Quaise Energy. "Our technology allows us to access energy anywhere in the world, at a scale far greater than wind and solar, enabling future generations to thrive in a world powered with abundant clean energy."
The company plans to use its novel drilling technology to repower traditional power plants, saving infrastructure costs and utilizing the current oil and gas industry’s workforce to accelerate the shift towards a sustainable energy industry.
"We need a massive amount of carbon-free energy in the coming decades," said Mark Cupta, Managing Director at Prelude Ventures. "Quaise Energy offers one of the most resource-efficient and nearly infinitely scalable solutions to power our planet. It is the perfect complement to our current renewable solutions, allowing us to reach baseload sustainable power in a not so distant future."
“The ubiquity and constancy of deep geothermal energy is tantalizing but economically inaccessible with conventional drilling technologies,” said Allison Hinckley, Senior Associate at Fine Structure Ventures. “Quaise’s radically different drilling technology offers a path to access this resource at a global scale with commensurate reductions in carbon emissions.”
Quaise Energy spun out of the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center in 2018. The company has raised $63M to date, including $18M in seed funds and $5M in grant money.
To learn more about Quaise, please visit: www.quaise.energy.
ABOUT QUAISE
Quaise Energy is terawatt-scale geothermal. We’re opening access to renewable, baseload power from anywhere on planet Earth. Deep geothermal uses less than 1% of the land and materials of other renewables, making it the only option for a sustainable clean energy transition.
Our approach to deep geothermal is unique in being geography agnostic: by outfitting existing drilling rigs with millimeter wave technology, we’re opening the way for power-dense, deep geothermal energy on a global scale. The path to terawatt-scale clean energy doesn’t require building global infrastructure. Quaise Energy is accelerating the clean-energy transition by repowering the fossil-fired infrastructure of today’s energy industry with clean geothermal steam.
Learn more at www.quaise.energy.
ABOUT SAFAR PARTNERS
Safar Partners is a seed- to growth-stage venture fund investing primarily in technology companies out of MIT, Harvard, and the University of Rochester. Safar takes advantage of the principles of private equity to create value as our companies scale beyond initial prototypes. We accelerate the scaling of our portfolio companies through the formation of spinouts or joint ventures to address additional markets, industries, or geographies. For more about Safar Partners, visit www.safar.partners.
ABOUT PRELUDE VENTURES
Prelude Ventures is a venture capital firm dedicated to advancing the low-carbon economy. The firm invests in exceptional entrepreneurs across a range of sectors including advanced energy, food & agriculture, transportation and logistics, advanced materials and manufacturing, and advanced computing. Prelude Ventures was founded in 2013 and is based in San Francisco. Learn more at www.preludeventures.com.
ABOUT FINE STRUCTURE VENTURES
Fine Structure Ventures is a venture capital fund affiliated with FMR LLC, the parent company of Fidelity Investments. We focus on early-stage investments in companies leveraging disruptive scientific and technological innovation.
