Geothermal energy startup Zanskar has raised $115 million in a Series C financing round to scale its AI-driven geothermal discovery platform and begin developing power plants across the Western United States. The round was led by Spring Lane Capital and included participation from existing backers Obvious Ventures, Union Square Ventures, and Lowercarbon Capital, as well as new and returning investors including Munich Re Ventures. The financing brings Zanskar’s total equity funding to $180 million.
The capital will support expansion of Zanskar’s discovery platform, additional exploration drilling, and construction of geothermal power plants within its multi-gigawatt development pipeline, with initial projects expected to deliver power before 2030.
Zanskar’s AI-native platform combines proprietary software with field-based geoscience to identify naturally occurring geothermal systems faster and at lower cost than traditional exploration methods. The company says this approach has already uncovered gigawatts of new geothermal potential in just a few years.
Carl Hoiland, CEO and Co-founder of Zanskar, said: “We started Zanskar with the belief that AI would have as profound an impact on geothermal cost and scalability as modern drilling technologies have. It would do so by enabling us to find more hidden geothermal systems, and to produce more power from each of those systems, than legacy models assumed. The result is a terawatt-scale opportunity. We’ve already confirmed multiple large, previously unknown geothermal resources across the Western U.S., and deeper drilling has validated that these systems can produce far more energy than expected. Thanks to the support of forward-thinking investors across energy, infrastructure, and technology, and the exceptional progress of our world class team, we are ushering in a new wave of clean, firm, geothermal power.”
Jason Scott, Partner and Entrepreneur in Residence at Spring Lane Capital, said: “Spring Lane is excited to lead the Series C financing for Zanskar and join the Board of the company. We are eager to support Zanskar because we believe there is a near infinite demand for firm, clean power around the world right now and geothermal energy is one of the only immediate ways to serve this enormous market. Zanskar is unique in that they have identified more geothermal anomalies in North America than any other company in decades. We believe that Spring Lane’s financial and operational support will enable them to rapidly develop enormous amounts of geothermal capacity, initially across the Western US.”
Andrew Beebe, Managing Director at Obvious Ventures, added: “The world class team at Zanskar is exactly what this country needs: fast, disciplined and very effective. They are positioning geothermal to be one of the cheapest, cleanest and safest energy sources in America right when we need it most.”
Joel Edwards, Co-founder and CTO of Zanskar, said: “We’ve always been inspired by the early, legendary explorers that came before us. Their resourcefulness and unfailing optimism laid the groundwork for discovery today. We like to think they’d be proud to see how we’ve resurrected and accelerated grassroots exploration with big data, modern computing, and more efficient field data collection, resulting in a pace of discovery not seen before. The resources we need are out there, hidden within the Earth’s crust, and we’re working hard to find the most exceptional hotspots to build a new era of geothermal energy, starting in the United States.”
