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Geothermal Startup Critical Energy Develops Modular Plant Installable in Two Weeks

June 17, 2026 at 14:55 EDT

Infra & Chips
Funding & M&A

Amid surging AI power demand, Los Angeles-based geothermal startup Critical Energy is advancing a new modular plant design that can be assembled in a factory and installed on-site in as little as two weeks. The company has raised $22 million in seed funding since 2024 and plans to bring its first full-size plant online in 2027.

June 17, 2026 · Critical Energy

Geothermal Power, Built Like a Car — Plants in Weeks, Not Years

A SpaceX-trained engineer unveils Apex: container-sized geothermal generating units assembled in a factory and shipped on trailers — compressing on-site construction to roughly two weeks to feed AI's surging power demand.

On-site Build Time: The Geothermal Bottleneck

Years

Traditional geothermal

~2 weeks

Apex on-site setup

Plant body built in a factory; only well drilling remains a separate on-site step.

$22M

Seed funding raised since 2024

MW-class

Output per unit (early demo over 50kW)

Target scale in the 2030s, in parallel

Closed-Loop ORC System

Heat vaporizes fluid

→

Vapor spins turbine

→

Condensed & recirculated

Zero-emission, consumable-free, efficient across a wide temperature range — with data-center waste-heat recovery also in view.

The Promise

U.S. data-center demand is set to double by 2035. Factory-built modules could finally erase construction time — geothermal's biggest deployment bottleneck — for round-the-clock baseload power.

The Open Questions

The first full-size plant won't run until 2027. Mass production and real-world performance remain unproven, with limited commercial operation and user feedback so far.

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