Geothermal energy has been used for thousands of years, powering heating systems as early as the 14^th century. It’s getting a big upgrade.

Beyond geothermal, there’s superhot geothermal, which uses ultra-deep drilling to access extremely hot rocks, extracting 5 to 10 times more power per well.

Quaise Energy, a  Massachusetts-based startup, is in the market developing the technology, which involves an electromagnetic beam that vaporizes rock. The company’s systems are able to reach superhot geothermal energy up to 12 miles below the service of the earth.

Temperatures that deep can reach 500 degrees Celsius, or over 930 degrees Fahrenheit.

“To access the resource at a scale that actually matters, we have to drill hotter first and deeper second,” said Carlos Araque, CEO of Quaise. “The oil industry routinely drills to depths of 2 to 3 miles, and maybe no more than 150 to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. We need to double or triple that to actually start to get the right resource.”

Quaise’s technology was invented at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2007. The company is working to scale it for commercial use, and demonstrated its technology with oil and gas company Nabors Industries in June. While the drilling itself is costlier, the energy output is so much higher that it’s ultimately a cost savings for the heat.

“We intend to build the first in the world superhot, or super critical geothermal power plant, to show exactly that 10X output that you get by going hotter,” Araque said.

Quaise plans to pilot the plant near Bend, Oregon, and hopes to have it ready by 2028. Nabors sees it as a very timely play.

“The potential of the market, the size of the market, the fact that today’s world with data centers, with AI, with the electrification of everything, we require so much power, kind of at all times,” said Guillermo Sierra, vice president, energy transition at Nabors.

Nabors is also an investor in Quaise. Other backers include Prelude Ventures, Engine Ventures, Safar Partners, Mitsubishi and Collab Fund. The company has raised a total of $103 million.

Sierra said the technology could also help repurpose a significant portion of the labor force that’s working in oil and gas.

At a geothermal event in Washington, D.C., in March, Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright showed strong support for geothermal energy. He said it could help with the growth of artificial intelligence and manufacturing and lower prices for electricity.

Wright also noted that President Donald Trump specifically mentioned geothermal, along with nuclear and hydropower, in his National Energy Emergency executive order. The recently passed tax and spending bill kept funding for geothermal, originally part of the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, while cutting money for other forms of renewable energy.

Meta is set to report its second-quarter earnings on Wednesday, with analysts eyeing any changes to the company’s costs and related guidance amid CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s recent artificial intelligence hiring blitz.

Here’s what analysts polled by LSEG are expecting:

• Earnings per share: $5.92 expected
• Revenue: $44.8 billion expected

Investors are likely to be monitoring any comments from Zuckerberg about his company’s recent spending on AI and how that technology might benefit Meta’s core online advertising business.

Meta kicked off its AI hiring bonanza in June when it invested $14.3 billion into Scale AI, landing the data-annotating startup’s CEO Alexandr Wang to co-lead the new Meta Superintelligence Labs as the company’s chief AI officer. Zuckerberg undertook the AI strategy overhaul to help the company regain momentum after lukewarm developer response to its Llama 4 AI model, CNBC reported Tuesday.

Cantor analysts wrote that they do not expect Meta’s AI hiring spree will affect the company’s 2025 projections for total expenses, estimated to fall in the range between $113 billion and $118 billion. If anything, Meta’s AI hiring blitz could move “the target above the low end,” the Cantor analysts wrote.

Zuckerberg said in July that the company would invest “hundreds of billions of dollars” into computing infrastructure for its AI endeavors, but the company hasn’t officially revised its 2025 capital expenditures since April. That month, Meta said its 2025 capital expenditures would come in the range of $64 billion to $72 billion, which was an increase from its previous outlook of $60 billion to $65 billion.

Analysts at BofA Securities said in a research note published Friday that there are signs that Meta could post second-quarter sales at or above the high end of the company’s previous guidance of $42.5 billion to $45.5 billion for the period.

Those positive signs include an increase of advertising spending from brands during the quarter and Google’s strong quarterly earnings results from last week, the analysts wrote, which implies that Meta, second only to Alphabet in digital advertising, could also post solid results.

Microsoft is scheduled to report fiscal fourth-quarter results after markets close on Wednesday.

Here’s what analysts are expecting, according to LSEG consensus:

• Earnings per share: $3.37
• Revenue: $73.81 billion

The estimates imply around 14% year-over-year revenue growth for Microsoft, the world’s No. 2 company by market cap. Revenue in the same period a year earlier came in at $64.73 billion.

Like technology rivals Alphabet and Amazon, Microsoft has been rushing to add data center capacity to meet soaring demand for running artificial intelligence models. Analysts polled by Visible Alpha expect $100.5 billion in capital expenditures in Microsoft’s 2026 fiscal year, which ends in June, representing 14% growth.

Last week Alphabet bumped up its 2025 capital spending forecast by $10 billion to $85 billion.

Investors also track Microsoft’s overall Azure cloud computing business, which is expanding as companies migrate software from on-premises data centers. Analysts polled by StreetAccount expect Azure growth of 34.4%, while CNBC’s consensus is 35.3%. In the fiscal third quarter, Azure growth came to 33%.

During the quarter, Microsoft celebrated its 50th anniversary, laid off more than 6,000 people and introduced a GitHub feature for assigning coding tasks to the Copilot assistant. The company also said LinkedIn chief Ryan Roslansky would take on added responsibility running Office productivity applications.

Microsoft shares are up about 22% in 2025, while the S&P 500 index has gained 8% over the same time period.

Executives will discuss the results with analysts on a conference call starting at 5:30 p.m. ET.

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