Move over, nuclear fusion fanboys. There's a new energy darling in town, and it's coming straight out of the SpaceX playbook.
Spencer Jackson, the co-founder and CEO who cut his teeth engineering the Falcon Heavy and Raptor rocket engines, just landed $19 million in seed funding for Critical Energy—a startup that's turning rocket science into geothermal power plants.
Jackson realized geothermal turbines resemble rocket engines. Critical Energy is building compact, factory-assembled turbines that can be installed far faster than the massive, site-assembled systems currently dominating the market.
"Geothermal is going to beat them to it. By a lot," Jackson told TechCrunch, referring to nuclear's early-2030s timeline.
The first 2.5 megawatt power plant is slated for completion by 2027 at an existing geothermal site—think Iceland or The Geysers in Northern California. A larger 5 megawatt module is also in the works for enhanced geothermal companies like Fervo Energy, which drill deeper to extract more heat.
Jackson's stated goal is 300 gigawatts of turbine manufacturing capacity per year by 2045. The IEA estimates at least 42 terawatts of geothermal capacity available worldwide—more than double global energy consumption last year. Tech giants are hungry for clean power to feed their AI data centers. A recent report suggests advanced geothermal could power nearly two-thirds of new data centers by 2030.
Critical Energy is partnering with machine shops to build turbomachinery. Jackson is pursuing the Tesla-SpaceX approach of vertical integration, meaning more components could eventually move in-house.
