Underground Ventures (UGV), a new investment firm specializing in geothermal tech platforms, launched with a $40 million fund that will focus on early-stage geothermal technology startups over the next 3-5 years.
As geothermal startups grow globally, UGV Co-founder and CEO Torsten Kolind highlighted Eavor’s success as a prime example of how geothermal energy is overcoming traditional scalability limitations.
Next-Generation Geothermal technologies, such as Eavor’s, achieve this by creating a closed-loop system several kilometres deep in the Earth’s subsurface, extracting energy via conduction and eliminating the need for locating aquifers. Moreover, geothermal energy has the capacity to become globally competitive, as it can provide heating, cooling, and power independently of fossil fuels, according to Kolind.
One of UGV’s core missions is to bridge the financial gap that geothermal technology startups encounter during their early stages. Kolind emphasized that while labs around the world are developing advanced technologies in drilling, well casing, supply chains, reservoir development, and energy conversion, geothermal startups often struggle with funding and lack commercial support.
UGV aims to revolutionize geothermal energy by developing new technology stacks optimized for hotter subsurface environments and harder rock types. This commitment to supporting innovative, clean, and baseload technology holds the potential to expand the global development of sustainable energy solutions.
UGV can take risk before conventional venture capital is able to, and work with inventors and technologists to scale beyond first-of-a-kind deployments. UGV is not a fund, it’s a technology investment firm.
Energy transformation needs more than just technology. UGV expects to publish progress, insights, and blueprints, allowing the community to build thousands of geothermal heating and power plants over the next 20 years.
It’s fossil-free, abundant, and weather-independent – unlike wind and solar. So why isn’t it everywhere?
However, for geothermal to be globally competitive, we will need a completely new technology stack. Drilling systems, well casing, reservoir development, turbines, and drilling rigs, all optimized for hotter environments and harder rock types. Thankfully, all of that is happening in labs around the world, but geotech startups are short on cash, often isolated, and lack commercial support. We must bring together the ecosystem to collaborate around one single goal: geothermal anywhere.
