Bill Gates’s Backed Fervo Energy Raises IPO Target to $1.82bn on $7.4bn
May 11, 2026 – 3:06 pm
Image by: Breakthrough Energy Coalition
The geothermal developer increased its share count by 26% and its top-of-range price by about 8% in an SEC filing on Monday. The revision points to the demand for clean baseload power that AI data-centre buyers have been ready to pay for.
Fervo Energy Raises IPO Target
Fervo Energy raised its IPO target on Monday to as much as $1.82bn, up from $1.33bn just over a week earlier, the Houston-based geothermal developer disclosed in an SEC filing. Fervo now plans to sell 70 million shares at $25 to $26 each, against the previous range of 55.56 million at $21 to $24. At the top of the new range, the listing would carry a market value of approximately $7.4bn against Fervo’s outstanding share count.
The size-and-price increase is unusually large for an IPO that has not yet priced. The combination of more shares plus a higher price band typically signals strong indications of interest during the roadshow, with the underwriters and the company concluding that the order book can absorb a larger trade at richer levels.
Investor Lineup
The investor list behind Fervo reads as a who’s-who of AI and clean-energy alignment:
- Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures has been a long-term backer
- Alphabet has invested directly and is also a major commercial customer
- Devon Energy and Shell have positioned the geothermal company alongside their own portfolio diversification work
- B Capital led the December 2025 Series E that closed at $462m.
Fervo’s Flagship Project
Fervo’s flagship project, Cape Station in Beaver County, Utah, is the world’s largest planned enhanced geothermal system development at 500 MW of installed capacity. Phase 1, sized at roughly 100 MW, is under construction and is on track to deliver first grid power later this year. Full build-out is targeted for 2028.
Market Interest
The economic logic behind enhanced geothermal is significant: it applies oil-and-gas drilling techniques to access hot rock at depth, producing baseload power that runs 24 hours a day without the intermittency that constrains solar and wind. For data-centre operators trying to source firm clean power, this profile is exactly what their PPA structures need.
The same logic supports the equity-market interest. Investors who have watched X-Energy’s record $1.02bn nuclear IPO price strongly into a data-centre-driven nuclear thesis are now looking at geothermal as the next clean-baseload bet.