Hades Mining, a Munich-based startup, has raised €5.5 million (US$6.4 million) in pre-seed funding to develop drilling systems for accessing deep geothermal energy and critical minerals in Europe.

The round was led by Project A, with participation from Visionaries Tomorrow, Founders Factory, and several industry angels.

Founded in 2025, Hades Mining is building drilling and subsurface access systems aimed at reaching previously inaccessible underground resources.

Its technology uses in-situ recovery, a fluid-circulation method, to extract minerals and geothermal energy without open-pit mining.

Hades Mining plans to use the new funding to further develop its technology and prepare its first project sites for extraction.

🔗 Source: EU-Startups

🧠 Food for thought

1️⃣ Hades enters a geothermal market where established players have raised substantially more capital

Hades Mining’s €5.5 million pre-seed round positions it as an early-stage player in a sector where established competitors have secured significantly larger funding rounds.

Fervo Energy has raised $421 million and Eavor Technologies has secured $288 million, demonstrating the capital-intensive nature of geothermal innovation 1.

This funding gap reflects the technical challenges of deep geothermal projects, where companies like Fervo are already operating commercial facilities, such as Project Red with 3.5 MW capacity, while planning much larger 400 MW plants by 2028 1.

The comparison suggests Hades will need to demonstrate substantial technical progress to attract the scale of investment required for commercial geothermal operations, especially given that global geothermal capacity remains limited at just 16.9 GW worldwide 2.

2️⃣ Dual-resource strategy aligns with urgent EU supply chain security initiatives

Hades Mining’s approach of targeting both geothermal energy and critical minerals extraction addresses two of Europe’s most pressing strategic dependencies simultaneously.

The EU currently imports over 90% of its critical minerals, creating significant vulnerabilities that the recent Critical Raw Materials Act specifically aims to address by increasing domestic production 3.

Europe’s heavy reliance on China for critical mineral processing has prompted initiatives like the Critical Raw Materials Act to bolster supply chain security and promote sustainable domestic sourcing 4.