Putting utility lines safely underground will require hundreds or even thousands of miles of new tunnels, and a San Francisco-based startup has a new tool for the job.
Petra says its semiautonomous drilling machine — which it calls Swifty — can cut through some of the hardest rocks on earth more quickly and cheaply than conventional boring machines. It launched out of stealth Thursday and announced a $30 million Series A that was led by DCVC, bringing its total funding to $33 million. Other investors include ACME Capital, Congruent Ventures, 8VC, Elementum Capital, Real Ventures, Tekfen Ventures and Lemnos.
Swifty was designed for undergrounding utility lines in dangerous geographies such as California, where above-ground power lines have caused a succession of devastating wildfires over the past few years.
The boring machine uses thermal technology without directly touching any surfaces and can drill small tunnels between 20 and 60 inches wide.
The startup was founded in 2018 by CEO Kim Abrams and Chief Product Officer Shivani Torres. Ian Wright, who co-founded Tesla, has been CTO for about a year now. Abrams previously co-founded Ripcord and worked on business development at NASA Ames. Torres studied mechanical engineering at Stanford, according to LinkedIn, and joined Petra as a founding member after initially investing in the startup through the San Francisco-based firm Lemnos.
"By delivering a boring solution that affordably undergrounds utilities through high-grade rock, we can finally protect communities from exposure to wildfires and ensure the safety of critical infrastructure in disaster-prone areas, especially in places like the Sierra Nevada mountains, Rocky Mountains and coastal regions," Abrams said in a statement.
Petra says that it has drilled 20-feet through Sioux Quartzite, an incredibly hard rock formation that is usually removed by dynamite.
"No tunneling method has been able to tunnel through this kind of hard rock until now," Wright said in a statement. This "proves our unique capability to affordably bury utility sized tunnels through high grade hard rock.”
Over the next 12 months, the startup intends to partner with utility and construction companies to bore demonstration tunnels. It will also work on developing a commercial version of Swifty that will be able to bore even longer distances.
