Investors include leading global drilling rig, services, and technology provider, Nabors, Christian Oldendorff’s new Family Office, alfa8, the previous CEO of private equity firm EQT, Thomas von Koch, newly established geothermal fund Underground Ventures, and Slovakia-based, Neulogy Ventures.
“The excitement around deep geothermal is well placed given that our innovations have taken the estimates for the geographical availability of geothermal energy from 3% to 70+% of the planet,” said Igor Kocis, co-founder and CEO of GA Drilling. “The demand for our technology picked up at an incredible rate. We couldn’t say this 18 months ago, but now if an energy operator or power company does not have geothermal in their strategy portfolio, they are already behind”
Last year, GA Drilling had announced the successful demonstration of its new deep drilling tool, ANCHORBIT® , a downhole walking system that cuts the cost of deep geothermal drilling by doubling the drilling speed and extending the drillbit lifetime in hard and abrasive formations. The company is also developing the innovative, contactless PLASMABIT (R) drilling tool to enable ultra-deep drilling in high-temperature hard formations.
GA Drilling Plasmabit (R) technology (source: GA Drilling)
GA Drilling had previously announced a partnership with ZeroGeo Energy to jointly develop a 12-MW Hot Dry Rock geothermal system in Lower Saxony, Germany, the first of many deep geothermal and geothermal energy storage projects that the two companies will be working on in Europe.
“Geothermal is the only game in town,” said Thomas von Koch, previous CEO at EQT Group. “Its potential to shift the energy industry is clear to those in the know, but now it’s about how we can access this natural battery beneath us. GA Drilling offers the best path to true baseload power delivery because of its technology to reach depths and temperatures within an ecosystem that makes it economically viable.”
“Underground Ventures has a narrow focus on geothermal technologies because of its huge potential to replace fossil fuels with an abundant and reliable green alternative,” said Torsten Kolind, Co-Founder & CEO of Underground Ventures. “GA Drilling has the IP and experience to address every step from deep geothermal drilling systems to repurposing existing oil and gas assets. We need to build thousands of power plants globally, not just tens, and we insist on working with partners like GA Drilling to move at the breakneck speed that requires.”
Poised to make a positive global impact
GA Drilling had recently been recognized by the EIC Scaling Club as one of 48 European deep tech scale-ups that are positioned to make a positive global impact. The company was carefully selected based on a number of factors and falls within four predefined market sector opportunities, namely Renewable Energies.
Backed by the European Innovation Council, the flagship programme of the European Commission with a budget north of €10 billion, the EIC Scaling Club’s mission is to significantly grow the value of the selected world-class businesses and help maximise their positive impact on a global level.
GA Drilling will be part of an esteemed community that will grow to 120+ deep tech champions in the near future, which the EIC Scaling Club will surround with hundreds of the world’s leading investment firms, corporations, media representatives, vetted business mentors and other industry stakeholders.
The EIC Scaling Club will assist GA Drilling and the other hand-picked deep tech scale-ups with fundraising support, leadership mentoring and coaching, corporate partnership identification and matchmaking, media visibility, recruitment, and much more.
