Tekcapital (AIM:TEK) said on Friday that its portfolio company Vesari has appointed Peter J. Ditton, the former Acting Idaho State Director of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, as Senior Advisor for Public Lands and Federal Permitting.
Tekcapital, the AIM-listed UK intellectual property investment group, holds a 51% stake in Vesari, which is developing a fully integrated, behind-the-meter, geothermal-powered hyperscale AI compute campus.
Ditton spent nearly four decades at the BLM, the federal agency that administers geothermal leasing and permitting on federal lands, most recently serving as Acting Idaho State Director from May 2024 to January 2025.
From 2006 to 2023 he was Associate State Director for BLM Idaho, directing statewide operations with a budget of more than $100 million and a workforce of roughly 800 permanent and 400 seasonal staff across mineral development, rights-of-way, environmental review and tribal consultation.
He provided executive oversight of the Four Rivers Field Office Resource Management Plan, completed in 2023, which addressed geothermal leasing on southwest Idaho public lands, and worked on reviews including the Gateway West transmission line and the Lava Ridge wind project.
In the new role, Ditton is expected to advise Vesari on federal land access, geothermal leasing, environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act, rights-of-way, and stakeholder and tribal engagement as the company advances site selection for its compute campuses.
"Securing and permitting federal land is one of the critical paths for geothermal development in the Western United States, and few people understand that process from the inside as well as Peter does," said Clifford M. Gross, Tekcapital's Executive Chairman.
The appointment follows a run of additions to Vesari's Science Advisory Board, which covers the company's three technical pillars of geothermal energy, hyperscale power and heat management, and low-Earth-orbit satellite laser data transmission.
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Geothermal scientist Dr. Joseph N. Moore joined on 17 July, satellite communications expert Dr. Barry G. Evans on 28 July, and satellite networking researcher Professor Beatriz Soret's appointment took effect 1 September, alongside fellow geothermal scientist Dr. Robert K. Podgorney.
Tekcapital's half-year results, reported on 6 August, showed net assets rising to $201.7 million for the six months to 30 June, up from $55.1 million at the end of December, with the uplift driven largely by the formation of the Vesari venture rather than cash returns from the wider portfolio.
Net asset value per share climbed to $0.78 from $0.27 over the same period, on a portfolio valued at $191.4 million.