For 60 years, Ormat Technologies has strategically built geothermal power plants where nature allows, over underground reservoirs of high-pressure water or steam, including around the Pacific “Ring of Fire” from Asia to the Americas. That approach made Ormat the largest geothermal operator in the world.

Now, Ormat hopes to expand rapidly alongside the AI data center boom by building baseload, clean power plants across the Western United States using both established methods and newer technologies. The company’s goal is enhanced geothermal systems, or EGS, which combine traditional geothermal power development with oil-drilling and fracking techniques. The idea is to make next-generation geothermal power possible in many more locations by tapping deeper, hotter underground reservoirs more easily.

Although the science is proven, Ormat and its competitors are racing to show they can build these plants economically and efficiently enough to compete with gas-fired power, renewables, and nuclear power. That challenge matters because AI-driven electricity demand is increasingly forcing utilities and developers to line up large amounts of firm power, and geothermal’s appeal is that it can run around the clock without depending on weather. To that end, Ormat is launching two separate EGS pilot projects with different partners: Sage Geosystems, a geothermal startup, and SLB, the century-old oilfield services firm. Ormat is also working closely with Google and data center developer Switch.

“We’re in a very rare situation where all the stars are aligned exactly on time,” Ormat CEO Doron Blachar told Fortune. “We have the hyperscalers and the AI demand. This basically puts us in a situation where we see endless demand for our product. The more electricity we can generate, the more we sell, and we’ve been doing a lot of exploration in the U.S. over the last few years.”

Blachar said Ormat already combines traditional geothermal growth with a newer battery energy storage business that is expanding alongside renewable solar power installations across the U.S. He said the company would still be successful even if its EGS push did not pan out, but he believes EGS, the company’s largest potential growth driver, will succeed. In his view, Ormat is better positioned than any other geothermal company to build EGS at scale.

“We know how to buy land positions. We have [contracts] with hyperscalers, with utilities, for hundreds of megawatts,” Blachar said. “We know how to get the permits. We know how to get the interconnections.”

“The uniqueness is we have all the ingredients to develop EGS. Once the pilots are successful, we’ll start running,” he added.

On Wall Street, Ormat is increasingly being compared with EGS startup Fervo, which went public in May in what became the largest clean energy IPO ever in the U.S. Fervo’s market capitalization quickly climbed to $10 billion before falling to $5 billion after modest setbacks, despite what some see as strong long-term potential. The comparison reflects how geothermal is drawing attention well beyond its traditional niche as developers look for scalable sources of firm power.

Ormat, by contrast, has seen its stock rise nearly 20% over the past 12 months, giving it a market capitalization of about $6.75 billion, slightly below an all-time high reached in early June. Blachar also emphasized that Ormat remains profitable outside of its pilot projects. The company reported revenue of $662.7 million for the first half of 2026, up 43% from a year earlier, and net profit of $71.2 million, up 4% year on year.

“There is no company in the industry that can take advantage of EGS better than Ormat,” he said. “We have been here for 60 years. We are big in power plants. We know how to build them efficiently and how to operate them. And once the pilots are successful—either of them, or both of them—we will be able to develop multiple EGS projects.”

Steady growth before the sprint

Ormat was founded in Israel and expanded globally before moving its headquarters to Reno, Nevada, more than 20 years ago. Nevada is a hotspot for geothermal energy, and both of Ormat’s EGS pilots are located there. The Sage project is at Ormat’s Blue Mountain power plant in Nevada, while the SLB project is at the Desert Peak plant. Ormat has also acquired new acreage in New Mexico, Oregon, and Idaho. Blachar said he is also bullish on Texas.

Sage’s milestone first pilot, a precursor to its Ormat project, came online in August near San Antonio.

Blachar joined Ormat in 2013 as chief financial officer and became CEO in 2020. He continues to work out of his home city, Tel Aviv, and regularly travels for Ormat projects in places including Reno, Indonesia, Turkey, and New Zealand. Outside the U.S., Indonesia is Ormat’s largest targeted growth market. “We are developing [in Indonesia], but it is taking a longer time. The processes are longer, and we are much more cautious, versus the U.S. where we are willing to take more risk in this environment,” he said.

Ormat’s operating power portfolio worldwide totals 1.85 gigawatts, enough to power 1.4 million U.S. homes or roughly two large data center complexes. The company’s 2028 growth target is up to 2.8 gigawatts through traditional geothermal and battery storage, excluding EGS.

Even so, that figure is small compared with what EGS could potentially produce underground. Blachar said Ormat has been developing roughly 100 megawatts of geothermal power per year, while each EGS project with a hyperscaler could easily reach 500 megawatts.

He said geothermal currently faces less political opposition than other forms of energy. Republicans have attacked wind and solar, while Democrats target fossil fuel emissions. Geothermal, by contrast, has support from both parties for now: Democrats favor its clean energy profile, while Republicans are comfortable with the role of traditional oil and gas companies in expanding into geothermal. SLB, for example, is pushing to grow in geothermal, drawing on its expertise in subsurface analysis and drilling wells.

Blachar said Ormat’s pilot projects with SLB and Sage will be drilled next and could be online by late 2027. “Once they finish, we will start developing EGS projects,” he said.

Two decades ago, Ormat experimented with EGS, but Blachar said the technology was too costly and difficult at the time. Since then, drilling technology has advanced rapidly as U.S. oil producers have learned to drill 5-mile-long horizontal wells underground to maximize oil and gas production. That broader shift in drilling capability is one reason geothermal developers now see more room to scale than they did in earlier attempts.

Earlier this year, Ormat launched its Ormega100 power plant unit, a standardized and simplified design with fewer moving parts that is intended to scale economically with EGS.

“EGS today is becoming a much more realistic outcome,” Blachar said. “When you take Ormat experience and business development in the design of a power plant, and the amount of land and positions we have in the U.S., we are going to take advantage of this new technology and grow much faster.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com