When Jon Vein and Joshua Held decided to go in on a geothermal energy project together, the two were an unlikely pairing.

Vein was a longtime entrepreneur who co-founded a cloud analytics company, received a patent for cultivated meat and won an Emmy as a producer of “The Simpsons.” Conversely, Held founded and led several companies that spanned drug development, cannabis and non-alcoholic beverages.

“We wanted to try to build a business if possible where there was a double bottom line,” Vein said. “Something that could be highly profitable, but something that did a public good.”

With the goal of developing data centers near hotbeds of abundant energy, the pair founded Red Hills Ranch in Hancock Park and acquired around 1,000 acres in Lake County. The sprawling swathe of quiet, undeveloped land in Northern California will one day be whirring with data centers sitting on top of bubbling geothermal energy underfoot. Vein and Held are now at work doing site planning and entitlement work, as well as looking for financing, data center developers and data center tenants.

“We have a pretty giant network, even though neither of us have been experts in geothermal power processing,” Vein said.

The area is among one of seven bits of land – one of six, if you exclude Yellowstone National Park – that reach above 200 degrees Celsius at 3.5 kilometers at depth, according to the Southern Methodist University Geothermal Lab, making it one of the most active geothermal locations in the continental U.S.

While the project seems totally random compared to Vein and Held’s curricula vitae, geothermal energy has quickly become a hot button topic in California. Rolling blackouts, artificial intelligence’s insatiable need for power and devastating California wildfires have overwhelmed the state’s energy grid, and breakthrough technology discoveries have turned a once-neglected alternative energy source into the answer.

“You’re utilizing the workforce, the skill, the labor and the know-how of the oil and gas industry,” Held said. “But you’re doing it in a way that creates clean, firm power that is how we decarbonize the grid long term in the state of California.”

An untapped resource

Geothermal energy once existed in a sleepy corner of renewable options. Though the United States harnesses more geothermal energy than any other country in the world, it still makes
up less than 1% of the country’s total power generation.

Tapping into geothermal energy proved to be pretty limited – one was geographically constricted to energy hotbeds and had to use copious amounts of water to successfully build a project. Water also eroded the area over time, turning a geothermal energy project into a diminishing asset.

“It had a really uncertain performance history, which made it pretty difficult to finance in a traditional way,” said Josh Prueher, the chief executive of geothermal energy company XGS Energy, which is partnering with Red Hills Ranch to tap into the area’s geothermal potential. “Financing is a big part of power infrastructure because there’s so much capital required.”

But an amalgamation of increased demand – brought on in part by artificial intelligence, climate disasters and international carbon emission regulations placed on companies – and increased supply – new technologies that stretch the capabilities of geothermal energy beyond its geographical constraints and limited water – has created a new renaissance for the energy source.

“Geothermal municipalities are saying they need more power, the state is clearly needing to look at alternative sources of energy generation and AI and data centers are a hot topic,”
Held said.

XGS, for example, uses a closed-loop system that recycles the same water consistently to harvest energy without the need to wash water through rock. Similar technologies have allowed California, a natural hotbed brewing with geothermal potential, to tap into this renewable source of energy without wasting an already scarce resource.

Once overshadowed by solar and blown past by wind, geothermal’s advantage as an around-the-clock power source is now at the forefront of data center power supply. Google signed the first corporate power purchase agreement for geothermal energy in April. Meta Platforms Inc. announced in June it partnered with XGS to power data centers in New Mexico using geothermal energy.

“Almost irrespective of what’s happening in the United States these days, the carbon agenda still is a pretty healthy one internationally,” Prueher said. “For companies that operate on an international basis, having carbon-free power is an important thing to them.”

Geothermal energy companies raised over $1 billion in venture funding globally in 2024, according to PitchBook, an all-time high for the sector. Right now, 2025 is on track to be the industry’s second-best funding year ever.

Even when President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill made steep cuts to solar and wind energy that disincentivized development and adoption of those renewables, the administration preserved favorable tax credits for geothermal energy projects.

Powering California

While growing up in Vacaville, Held watched his quiet town turn into a burgeoning bioengineering hub. Through city initiatives, Vacaville quickly embraced its biotechnology and bioengineering reputation and, by 2020, entitled 1.6 million square feet of industrial space to the biotech and advanced manufacturing space.

But the region was struggling to retain large enterprise contracts – among the city’s biggest job creators – due to insufficient power. To that end, Vein noted that his new company is negotiating with a handful of cities to provide excess power from the geothermal project.

“(California) has always been very much a state that prides itself on conservation of all the beautiful natural habitats and areas throughout the state,” Held said. “Geothermal represents a way to tap into an abundant resource that this state has in an outsized measure that could really drive enterprise but can do it with conservation in mind. And with these modernizations and technology, water doesn’t become a huge prerequisite to being able to exploit that resource. It really checks a lot of the boxes.”