Zanskar Raises $30 Million to Accelerate Discovery of Geothermal Energy for Clean and Affordable Power
May 06 2024 - 2:39PM
Business Wire
Zanskar Geothermal & Minerals (”Zanskar”), the leading
geothermal exploration company, announced today the closing of $30M
in new funding led by Obvious Ventures. The round, which includes
participation by previous investors such as Munich Re Ventures,
Union Square Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, Safar Partners, and
First Star Ventures, as well as newcomer Clearvision Ventures,
enables Zanskar to scale its AI-led exploration technology to
develop new geothermal resources.
As demand rises with more intensive computing and
electrification of industries such as transportation, geothermal is
an alternate, sustainable energy source that stabilizes a
carbon-free grid and provides affordable electricity when the US
existing energy infrastructure can’t meet demand. Geothermal
utilizes heat from under the ground to produce 24/7 renewable
energy, which Zanskar can pinpoint to dramatically expand the
supply of power projects.
“We are ready for this next phase of growth and are excited to
bring Obvious onto the team,” said Carl Hoiland, Zanskar CEO and
Co-founder. “We want to make geothermal the cheapest and most
widely deployed firm renewable on the planet. Since our Series A,
we beat industry discovery records and developed new tools to
unlock a deep pipeline of new geothermal resources needed in our
energy transition.”
Since its last fundraise in 2022, Zanskar has established itself
as a leader in geothermal discovery. Public accomplishments include
winning multiple contracts with the United States Department of
Defense's Defense Innovation Unit to explore new geothermal
resources and advance their mission of energy resilience. In
addition, its field data collection program collects more low-cost,
early-stage field data every three months than what industry and
academia combined did over the prior ten years. This early-stage
field data program, in addition to rapidly iterating model
predictions, enabled Zanskar to make more greenfield geothermal
discoveries than the industry made over the prior ten years
combined.
“Energy requirement forecasts for the electrification of
industries like transportation, oil, and big tech data centers
massively underestimated how much power will be needed in the U.S.
and around the world to meet growing demand,” said Andrew Beebe,
Managing Director at Obvious Ventures. “We’ve been scouring the
planet for scalable clean power solutions to help address the
current energy crisis and believe Zanskar has the disruptive
technology needed to help the world avoid gridlock. With its
AI-powered platform, Zanskar has made geothermal discovery more
accessible and cost-effective, creating opportunities to find and
distribute massive supplies of green energy now.”
“I still get excited every time we make a new discovery; it
never gets old,” said Joel Edwards, Zanskar's CTO and Co-founder.
“We have an incredible team who are running through all the
barriers that prevent geothermal discovery and de-risking. I’m
blown away by what the team has accomplished; at this pace, we’re
set to do some incredible work with the new funding by bringing new
tools to geothermal.”
Zanskar will deploy the funds to accelerate technology
development and advance its portfolio of greenfield power projects
to serve new partnerships. Please visit www.zanskar.com to learn
more and connect.
About Zanskar
Zanskar is an AI-native geothermal developer leveraging a suite
of new technologies to improve the geothermal discovery and
development process. In its work to decarbonize electricity
generation, Zanskar is generating a pipeline of new discoveries and
increasing the scalability of geothermal power generation. Zanskar
is currently hiring a number of high-impact roles. Please visit
www.zanskar.com to learn more.
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Jake Gong 801-341-9169 comms@zanskar.us