Projected growth in global data-center power demand by 2030
Goldman Sachs Research, 2025Pre-seed / $5.5M / Infrastructure
Power
the compute.
Khora develops vertically integrated data centers that generate their own 24/7 geothermal power on-site.
01 / The shift nobody priced in
Power overtook land as the thing you can't buy.
For a decade, siting a data center was a real-estate problem. AI demand has moved the binding constraint from acres to amps.
Average wait in U.S. interconnection queues
Lawrence Berkeley National LabU.S. counties and cities with new data-center restrictions
Food & Water Watch, 202502 / The integrated system
Bring your own power. Build up, not out.
Three trends are usually treated as separate bets. The alpha is in refusing to separate them.
01 / Power
Generate it on-site
Enhanced geothermal delivers 24/7 carbon-free baseload at costs increasingly competitive with the grid.
02 / Density
Stack it vertically
Modular compute cells inside a braced exoskeleton put several times more deployable load on a constrained parcel.
03 / Heat
Cool it with the same loop
Direct-to-chip liquid cooling and geothermal share one integrated fluid system, designed as a single asset.
The moat
The power players and data-center players are racing toward each other. Khora is already in the middle.
03 / Parcel economics
Same five acres.
Several times the compute.
Modeled on a constrained five-acre parcel, holding IT density constant. Planning figures—not engineering specifications.
Conventional warehouse
36 MW2 stories / 45% site coverage
Khora / 40 floors
263 MWModular cells / 25% footprint
04 / What we're not pretending
The hard parts
This is infrastructure, not a magic box. Here is what serious diligence will flag, and our honest read on each.
Infrastructure capital
The first asset is a multi-hundred-million-dollar project.
Our read
This round makes the first project financeable. The well, real estate, and compute layers can be funded separately.
Heat and demand
The best geothermal gradients and the most constrained markets do not always overlap.
Our read
We begin in Texas and the Mountain West, where strong gradients and grid pressure already coincide.
Converging incumbents
Power developers want the customer; data-center operators want the power.
Our read
Khora's edge is integration from day one—not a bolt-on retrofit from either side.
The team is the thesis
This domain rewards people who have drilled wells and built hyperscale infrastructure.
Our read
The round is explicitly gated on closing a specialist co-founder and senior engineering hires.
05 / Environmental + resource profile
Clean infrastructure, without the green gloss.
What's better, what's a tradeoff, and what we'll quantify at feasibility.
Clean, firm, local
Geothermal is 24/7 carbon-free baseload. Where Khora displaces new natural-gas generation, the reduction is real.
Much less cooling water
Closed-loop, direct-to-chip cooling recirculates fluid instead of evaporating millions of gallons to shed heat.
A 50-year platform
The structure, power, and cooling outlast many generations of silicon, amortizing embodied carbon over decades.
The tradeoffs we don't hide
Khora doesn't reduce server energy use. Drilling has real impacts, including water use and managed seismic risk. A tall structure is carbon-intensive. Feasibility will publish all-in water usage and lifecycle carbon against a grid-powered comparable.
06 / What this round buys
From thesis to a bankable first project.
The round converts the thesis into one thing that unlocks project capital: a specific site, validated design, and buyer at the table.
0—6 months
Close the team, rank the sites
Sign specialist leadership and screen Texas and Mountain West candidates.
6—12 months
Validate one specific site
Complete subsurface assessment, reference engineering, and independent review.
12—18 months
Site + design + a buyer's LOI
Secure a site option and offtake signal to support a project-framed Series A.
07 / The round
Raising $5.5M
to make the first
project financeable.
An infrastructure-development round funding 18 months of specialist work, site validation, reference engineering, and the first bankable feasibility package.
36%Founding team
22%Subsurface + validation
42%Design, site + structuring