Geothermal Startup Bedrock Energy Secures $12M Series A Raise

Winter’s cold is impacting much of the country, but geothermal is heating up in the proptech venture capital world.

On Wednesday, geothermal heating and cooling startup Bedrock Energy announced it had raised a $12 million Series A round. Titanium Ventures led the round, with Energy Impact Partners and Sustainable Future Ventures  joining existing investors Wireframe Ventures, Overture Ventures, Toba Capital, Elemental Impact, First Star Ventures and Cantos.

Austin-based Bedrock Energy plans to use the funding to further develop its technologies as well as expand deployment in Colorado, Utah and neighboring states.

“Before Bedrock existed to bring down the cost of the geothermal field, some geothermal systems could range from potentially $15 per square foot to $40 per square foot in terms of that geothermal asset,” said Joselyn Lai, co-founder and CEO at Bedrock Energy. “Now, Bedrock is bringing down the cost to something that is consistently under that $15 to $20 per square foot, down to the $10-per-square-foot range or lower. At that price point, with a combination of federal incentives and savings, you actually end up having potentially somewhere around a five-year payback period, because you’re actually saving somewhere between 50 cents and $1 per square foot.”

Founded in 2022, Bedrock Energy’s technologies include advanced subsurface thermal simulation capabilities and what it calls an intelligent construction platform for geothermal borefield construction. The company says its deployment teams install geothermal heat pump systems for real estate owners on a fast schedule with high accuracy and performance. The systems can range from single-structure buildings to connected systems serving multiple lots, saving owners money, the company said.

In addition to energy savings, geothermal heating and cooling impacts energy efficiency in extreme temperatures, bringing increased value to customers, utilities and regulators alike, Bedrock Energy claimed in its funding announcement.

“What we have built is a new type of drilling technology that enables us to read the ground while drilling,” Lai explained. “If you’ve ever seen these autonomous vehicles driving around California or Arizona, they can’t do what they’re doing without reading the road ahead of them and making computational decisions about how to operate the vehicle.That’s what we do, but for the subsurface. Instead of drilling blindly — which makes things expensive, either because of errors, or just needing a lot of manual intervention, or being very slow — Bedrock is able to drill somewhere between three and eight times faster because we are meeting the ground with our combination of hardware, sensors, software and drilling machinery.”

Bedrock’s clients range across industrial, office, hospitality and multifamily properties, said Lai.

According to Oak Ridge National Laboratory, adoption of geothermal heat pumps in 70 percent of U.S. buildings could avoid seven gigatons of carbon-equivalent emissions by 2050 and save 24,500 miles of transmission line construction by offsetting needs from the power grid.

“Geothermal energy has incredible promise as an always on, 24/7, carbon-free source of power, heating and cooling,” said Mark Sherman, managing partner for Titanium Ventures. “We believe that Bedrock Energy has developed several unique, integrated technologies that will dramatically open up the market for cost-efficient geothermal heating and cooling of buildings, changing the economics of this industry.”

Philip Russo can be reached at prusso@commercialobserver.com.