00:00Robert Friedland, co-founder, chairman, and CEO of iPulse.
00:03He's spent decades building major mining and tech companies, including Ivan Ho Mines.
00:07And still with us at the desk is strategist Sarah Hunt of Alpine Saxon Woods.
00:11Robert, thank you so much for joining.
00:13Congratulations on this.
00:14I got to say, my initial reaction was just looking at the price tag of $250 million,
00:18which is like one of the hyperscaler sneezes, and it's worth that much.
00:23What does this now do to you to have this contract in your hands
00:27and to have this money able to deploy?
00:30We're talking about pulse electrical power here,
00:33and $250 million is plenty for the initial purpose here.
00:37If you've used one of those little Chinese-made tennis rackets,
00:41which has a 9-volt battery to kill a fly or a mosquito,
00:44then you've experienced pulse power.
00:46So there's three basic ways to use electrical energy,
00:49direct current, alternating current, and pulse power.
00:52Pulse power requires a new generation of semiconductors and capacitors,
00:57but it's the most efficient way to use electrical energy.
01:00Just like you zap that fly and get that nice feeling,
01:03we can use pulse power to change almost everything in modern life.
01:07So the CHIPS Act provided about $280 billion for the semiconductor industry.
01:13Some of that is for R&D and to bring that technology to the United States.
01:16We're developing a new technology package of new semiconductors and capacitors
01:23to enable us to use electricity in a better way.
01:26So it does feel like it helps to solve a really critical bottleneck when it comes to energy.
01:31But what about things, you said, so I guess high upfront costs are not an issue.
01:36What about things like water and those types of bottlenecks that you might need?
01:40Geothermal power is really tied to the cost of drilling in rock.
01:45If we just go underneath our feet here under Manhattan,
01:48if you go down 5 kilometers or 10 kilometers, it's hot down there.
01:51And generally that guy in a red suit with the horns, it's pictured as being hot down there.
01:57So all the heat we need to generate electricity for planet Earth is right under our feet.
02:02But to drill in hot rock, we need new defense-related electronics.
02:09We need very robust semiconductors and capacitors that we're developing here in the United States.
02:15And it's that kind of baseload power, which has no global warming effects.
02:20It's 24 hours a day that we need to drive this dramatic increase we have in energy for AI,
02:27electrification of the automobile, and electrification of the world economy.
02:31And what's happened in the state of our moods,
02:33showing us really our liability to the supply of hydrocarbon,
02:38is going to drive an even bigger investment in finding a better way
02:42to sustainably re-industrialize the United States.
02:45So one of my contentions all along has been that if we're going to get where we're trying to go,
02:50the linear exploration of energy has to happen in different ways.
02:54We have to have new technology.
02:55What kind of time frame are we talking about to get something where you get baseload power in a time?
03:00And what kind of footprint are we talking about?
03:02Because it is, we absolutely need the technology to leapfrog here.
03:05This is going to be fast.
03:07We're already 20 years in a private unicorn getting this far.
03:11We're already drilling in granite rock today, the diameter of a hole about 12 and a half inches, quite large.
03:18And we're drilling about two and a half times faster,
03:21with about six times the drill bit lifetime that has ever been achieved in human history.
03:26So if you can imagine a robot that can drill through hot rock cheaply and quickly
03:31and circulating water in a closed loop through that hot rock,
03:35we get the same electrical load that you get from a nuclear power plant without the radioactivity.
03:41Because at great depth, Mother Earth is a nuclear power plant.
03:45There's enough uranium in the core of the Earth based on the enormous pressures
03:49that a lot of scientific opinion is that Mother Earth actually has enough fuel
03:55to create that heat for another six billion years, which is forever on the human timescale.
04:00So the real answer is not to chew up birds in windmills.
04:04And the real answer is not to pave the Earth in solar cells,
04:08because the sun doesn't shine all the time and demand for this studio or for AI is around the clock.
04:13The best answer is geothermal.
04:15So we want to thank the folks at the Department of Commerce in the United States government
04:20for accelerating this.
04:21And we'll be drilling in hot rock in 18 months.
04:24We're drilling right now in cold rock,
04:26but we're hardening our semiconductors and our technology
04:30to go drilling into rock two times or three times the temperature of boiling water.
04:35And once we do that, the problem of unlimited cheap power for planet Earth is solved.
04:40And that's what this is about.
04:42And we don't need that much money.
04:43But Thomas Alva Edison didn't need a lot of money to invent the light bulb in his garage.
04:48Even so, it is still coming from the government.
04:50Would this be a first step in the government taking a stake?
04:53I mean, your pitch is really compelling.
04:54The president also does not like windmills and the birds that they might murder.
04:58Is that what's next on the horizon for you?
05:00Well, he's right about that.
05:02There's American bald eagles getting chopped up at windmills in Montana.
05:06And they're an endangered species.
05:08So the fact is that as the windmills get longer...
05:11They're not like mass-murdering bald eagles, Robert.
05:13If you and I, if you're my girlfriend and we're flying north and, you know, we're just Canadian geese, all
05:19of a sudden, boom!
05:19Paint a very sad picture.
05:20Yeah.
05:21No, we need a better solution than wind.
05:23We need a better solution.
05:24But is the government so on board that you think they might want to take a stake in your company?
05:28No, they will.
05:28There's an equity component to this discussion, if you read the press release by the government this morning.
05:34There are some people that would push back on this, that this looks something like state capitalism, that this isn't,
05:39you know, the conservative party that we're used to.
05:41The government shouldn't be making stake, shouldn't be taking these types of bets on these companies.
05:45What would you say to that kind of thing, Robert?
05:47That's laughable.
05:47Take a look at China.
05:49Don't be ridiculous.
05:50You know, China has intelligently applied state capitalism, and that's exactly the problem.
05:56The United States is so far behind in the greeting of the world economy.
06:00If you compare the scale of our electric automobile industry to the Chinese, if you really want to change the
06:05way this world works,
06:06and you want to feed and clothe 8 billion people with fresh water and clean food, we need the government
06:12to take a lead.
06:13And the CHIPS Act was the first time the Democrats and the Republicans got together on anything.
06:18This was under the Biden administration in 2022.
06:21It's called the Chips and Science Act.
06:23And so this is the fruit of this sort of thing.
06:25So if we get to the 18 months and we're drilling into hot rock, how long are we then before
06:30we're transmitting energy?
06:32How long until that actually becomes I can now attach it to something?
06:36And how much am I getting out of the...
06:37How do I think about this in terms of individual either places and stations that you're doing it or one
06:43big one?
06:43How do we think about that?
06:44Great question, Sarah.
06:45The United States of America has the largest geothermal heat endowment in the world.
06:51You can drill holes anywhere in California or Colorado or Utah or Nevada, and there's heat right underneath your feet.
06:57And so as soon as this drilling capability is available, we can turn it on to the existing tens of
07:04thousands of drillers in the United States and drill for heat instead of oil.
07:09You just take those drill rigs in Texas, move them sideways, drill for heat.
07:13And the addressable TAM runs into trillions of dollars if we use geothermal power to green our grid.
07:20And this is the problem.
07:22You're not going to have AI unless you have uninterruptible baseload power.
07:26And you've seen what's happened in the straights or moons.
07:29If you order a gas turbine today to build a data center, you've got a six- or seven-year
07:33wait already.
07:34So we think geothermal is the answer, and we think this is the first time we've talked about this publicly.
07:41So, you know, we'll be back.
07:43Oh, I hope so, because it's super interesting.
07:45I wonder how often you're getting phone calls from the big AI data center hyperscaler players.
07:51Are they just really hungry for the output you're about to have?
07:53I have a tour with one of the hyperscalers on the 29th of June, which is in two days, three
07:59days?
07:59Yeah, three days.
08:00No, we're talking to everybody.
08:02Yeah, of course.
08:03How does it work in them trying to get, like, any sort of, like, exclusivity or to make sure that
08:08the energy gets funneled to them?
08:09What do those conversations look like?
08:10We don't need to give anyone exclusivity.
08:12We already have the largest mining companies in the world as shareholders.
08:16The miners also need energy to mine the metals you need to have an energy transition.
08:22Fundamentally, the limiting factor in everything you see in the studio is energy.
08:26And all of a sudden, we have an explosion in baseline demand for energy.
08:31And, you know, as these windmills get longer, the tip velocity of those blades gets faster.
08:36And my girlfriend, flying north, can't see that tip velocity.
08:40And poof, you're just nothing but a bunch of feathers.
08:43Oh, Robert, I'm going to just feel so sad about the girlfriend-boyfriend birds.
08:47It's not that common.
08:49Come on.
08:50We're not out there, like, murdering entire...
08:52What about the tall build of the skyscrapers in New York?
08:55Those murder birds.
08:55There's a lot of...
08:56It's a problem.
08:57But, you know, human ingenuity is all about feeding and clothing 8 billion people on the Earth with the least
09:03possible deleterious effect.
09:06And anything you do in the world, including powering the studio, has an impact on the environment and on people.
09:12Geothermal is clearly the simplest and cleanest idea for baseload power for planet Earth.
09:17Well, thank you.
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