Fervo Energy

Fervo develops enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) that use horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing to create artificial reservoirs in hot, dry rock. Water circulated through these fractures returns to the surface as high-temperature steam to drive turbines. The approach adapts precision subsurface tools, such as distributed fiber-optic sensing, that were perfected in the North American shale patch.

Traditional geothermal relies on finding natural hydrothermal reservoirs — permeable, hot, water-saturated rock — which are geographically rare. Fervo targets impermeable hot rock that exists at depth almost everywhere but has never been commercially accessible. Its operational model replaces exploration risk with a repeatable manufacturing process, drilling horizontal laterals and stimulating fracture networks in defined stages.

Devon Energy led Fervo's 2024 Series D round, signaling a direct link between the independent oil producer and next-generation geothermal. Other strategic backers include Liberty Energy, a major pressure-pumping provider, and Helmerich & Payne, the largest US land-drilling contractor. Google contracted for capacity from the Project Red facility, marking the first corporate power purchase agreement with an EGS project.

No. Fervo is privately held and has raised its capital through venture and strategic corporate equity rounds. It has not signaled a specific timeline for an initial public offering, remaining focused on commercial-scale project delivery in Nevada and Utah.

Fervo's first commercial facility, Project Red, is a 3.5 MW plant in northern Nevada that came online in 2023. The flagship Cape Station project in Beaver County, Utah, will be built in phases, targeting 400 MW of initial capacity. The company has regulator-approved geothermal leases across the western United States.

Unlike wind or solar, geothermal plants run at high capacity factors — typically over 90% — because the underground heat source is constant. Fervo's EGS fields can ramp generation up or down on demand by adjusting flow rates from subsurface wells, making the resource capable of load-following and baseload power delivery.

Latimer worked as a drilling engineer at Hess Corporation during the Bakken and Eagle Ford shale revolutions, where he witnessed how horizontal drilling and staged fracturing unlocked massive tight-oil resources. He left the oil industry to pursue a graduate degree focused on adapting those same techniques to geothermal heat mining, co-founding Fervo out of the Cyclotron Road fellowship at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.