For the past several months I've been working on one question: how do you get a lot more electricity to the places that need it, and soon? I came to it from the side of the people who use the power. Conversation after conversation about AI, factories and new buildings ran into the same wall, and the wall was electricity. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that, in the US regions it has data for, the median power project finished in 2025 took 61 months to go from asking for a grid connection to commercial operation.
I spent a long time on the fastest ways around that wall, and then on the ones that last. That's what pulled me toward geothermal. The heat is already underground, and a geothermal plant doesn't burn fuel to make electricity. The hard part is the ground itself: finding the right rock, drilling it well, and getting the power to someone who needs it.
Enhanced geothermal is the version that doesn't wait for nature to put hot water in exactly the right place. You drill into hot rock, open paths through it, and circulate water to bring the heat up. People have been trying since the early 1970s. Of the projects I've checked, and by the strict definition I use, which leaves out stimulated wells inside existing hot-water fields, only three enhanced geothermal plants with more than a megawatt of capacity have said since 2025 that they are producing power: one in France, one in the UK, and Fervo's first plant in the US. I don't read that as a warning. I read it as how early this is. At Fervo, drilling is getting faster: the company says it cut its drilling times by about 75% between 2022 and 2025.
I also read what happened to the projects that stopped. The reasons on record mostly come back to a few things: water didn't move between the wells the way it needed to, the money ran out, or earthquakes stopped the work, and failed wells set some projects back. Where the heat came in lower than expected, some forecasts had leaned on surface signs or shallow readings rather than a deep measurement nearby. What I took from all of it is simple. Understand the ground as well as the record allows before anyone drills, and be honest about what you don't know.
That's where Terrak starts. The company will find and secure hot, buildable ground in the American West: ground with the heat, the rights to develop it, and a realistic path to deliver power to a buyer. Later, it will build on that ground with partners who drill for a living. To find that ground I've built a careful way of reading the public record that keeps every number tied to its source and says unknown where the record runs out. Before any money goes underground, I'll have geologists check it in the field.
It's early, and I'm building the first team now, starting with a geologist and a land specialist. If you've spent years logging wells or mapping rock in the West, if you know how land and mineral rights really change hands, or if you've drilled for oil and gas and wondered where those skills go next, I'd like to hear from you. The International Energy Agency estimates that up to 80% of the investment in a geothermal project involves capacity and skills common in the oil and gas industry. And if you invest in things that are measured in decades, please write to me too.