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Mazama raises $135m to drill the last mile toward 750F rock at Newberry
Mazama Energy has $135 million to push a well at Oregon's Newberry site toward rock at 750F. The technology's first outside test is a generation demonstration at 15 megawatts per well, and the company is still seeking certification of the 10 gigawatt claim on the site.
The Product Desk · Product desk
What happened
- Mazama Energy said on September 17 it had raised $135 million in an oversubscribed Series B led by Centaurus Capital and Doerr Capital, with ConocoPhillips and Shell Ventures among the participants.
- The money funds drilling toward rock at 750F at Newberry in Oregon, where the company says each well could deliver up to ten times the power of a conventional geothermal well running at 390F.
- Its second Project Athena well reached 10,350 feet in 15 days in September, about 80 percent faster than the well it drilled in 2025, and is now being extended roughly a mile deeper.
- Project Ceres, supported by the Department of Energy, will develop horizontal wells in superhot rock, targets 15 megawatts of electrical capacity per well and is expected to demonstrate power generation in 2027.
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Why it matters
- constraint A 2030 supply conversation with Mazama is a conversation about roughly 13 wells, so anyone matching a data center load to this plans against 200 megawatts.
- contradiction TechCrunch presents 10 gigawatts as what the Oregon site can produce and an upward revision from Khosla's 5 gigawatts; Interesting Engineering has the company still seeking certification of the figure.
- decision Neither account of the round names a customer or an offtake agreement, so a site that needs firm power in 2027 and picks this over a gas turbine is underwriting the generation demonstration expected in 2027.
- capability If the company's claim of 75 percent less water and 80 percent fewer wells holds up at scale, the surface infrastructure and footprint of each project fall with the well count.
A buyer sizing firm power for 2030 can only act on one of the two capacity numbers attached to this site. Mazama told TechCrunch it aims to complete development of the first Oregon site by 2030 and to be generating 200 megawatts at that point [14]. At the 15 megawatts per well Project Ceres targets, 200 megawatts is about 13 wells [11][15]. The 10 gigawatt figure attached to the same site is 50 times larger [18], and at 15 megawatts a well it would take roughly 667 wells [25].
The two accounts of that 10 gigawatts do not agree. Interesting Engineering reported that Mazama is seeking independent certification of more than 10 gigawatts of resource potential at Newberry [16]. TechCrunch reported the site as capable of producing 10 gigawatts and called that a sharp upward revision from last year, when Vinod Khosla put its potential at 5 gigawatts [17].
The heat in the ground is still short of the target. In 2025 Mazama built an engineered system at Newberry that reached 629F, showing reservoir creation, underground connectivity and heat recovery [7]. Extending the current well about a mile deeper would finish it near 15,630 feet [9], close to the roughly 15,000 feet TechCrunch reported as the depth where 750F becomes available [10]. The remaining 121F is what the per-well output claim depends on [20].
Sriram Vasantharajan, Mazama's CEO, said: "At Newberry, we have demonstrated the critical pieces together: extreme-temperature drilling, reservoir creation and heat harvesting, at temperatures no other engineered geothermal system has achieved" [21].
The AI load framing comes from the coverage. TechCrunch described enhanced geothermal startups as "shaping up to be the dark horse in the battle to power AI data centers and other large loads on the grid," while tech companies and data center developers have put their weight behind natural gas [22]. Neither account mentions an offtake agreement or a customer [23]. TechCrunch also cited the University of Twente and the Clean Air Task Force for an estimate that tapping 1 percent of superhot rock worldwide could generate more than 63 terawatts [24]. Mazama was incubated at Khosla Ventures, and the new round added SiteGround Capital, H. Barton Asset Management and the Jeffrey and Marieke Rothschild Foundation [5][4].
Two numbers decide whether superhot rock belongs in a 2029 power plan. The first is the temperature a finished well actually holds once it is producing. The second is wells per year, since a gigawatt at 15 megawatts a well is about 67 wells [26], and the Athena well is Mazama's second [8]. TechCrunch reported that the company plans to start generating electricity sometime next year [13].
What to watch
- Whether an independent certifier signs off on more than 10 gigawatts of resource potential at Newberry, and at what number.
- Whether the extended Athena well logs 750F when it reaches its final depth.
- Any named buyer for the output of the 2027 generation demonstration.