ZincFive^® has closed out 2025 with major industry recognition, earning top honors in the 2025 Power Technology Excellence Awards across four categories: Innovation, Product Launch, Safety, and Environmental Excellence. Powered by GlobalData’s business intelligence, the awards celebrate companies pushing the global power sector forward, and this year’s results underscore ZincFive’s accelerating leadership.

The wins reflect the company’s momentum as demand for high-power, low-impact energy storage solutions continues to intensify. With nearly 2 gigawatts of nickel-zinc (NiZn) systems deployed or contracted worldwide, ZincFive is helping operators meet the explosive requirements of AI-driven data centers while strengthening resilience and reducing environmental impact.

At the center of this progress is ZincFive’s Immediate Power Solutions portfolio, which blends patented NiZn chemistry with intelligent system-level engineering. These systems deliver millisecond-level responsiveness to dynamic loads and operate reliably at higher temperatures, reducing cooling requirements and improving overall efficiency. The award-winning BC 2 AI UPS Battery Cabinet extends this approach even further, providing fast-load support for GPU-intensive AI applications and traditional outage protection in a single compact system. By consolidating functions that once required multiple layers of equipment, it frees valuable white space and simplifies power architecture.

ZincFive’s wins also reinforce the company’s long-standing commitment to safety and sustainability. NiZn technology is inherently safe, built from abundant, recyclable materials and provides lifetime greenhouse gas emissions that are 25 to 50 percent lower than traditional lead-acid and lithium-ion options. This aligns with growing industry expectations for cleaner, more responsible power infrastructure.

These latest honors join a growing list of accolades, including recent recognition on TIME’s 2025 World’s and America’s Top GreenTech Companies lists, the 2024 Edison Award™, CleanTech Breakthrough’s 2024 Overall Innovation of the Year, and more, signaling a defining moment for ZincFive as it continues to set new benchmarks in mission-critical power.

To learn more, reach the full release here.

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As artificial intelligence accelerates across global data centers, conversations often focus on compute, power density, and next-generation infrastructure. But according to Nabeel Mahmood, Strategic Advisor at ZincFive and Brandon Smith, Vice President of Global Sales and Product at ZincFive, the most crucial element of AI scalability isn’t hardware. It’s people.

Moderated by Ilissa Miller, CEO of iMiller Public Relations, this webinar uncovered why the AI workforce, not compute, is the true limitation and what must change for sustainable growth.

People Are the Real Bottleneck in AI Scalability

Mahmood explained that scaling AI isn’t just a matter of adding more servers or GPUs. It requires practitioners who understand data pipelines, model governance, operational resiliency, and infrastructure design. Without skilled talent, organizations face operational risks despite abundant compute. Smith highlighted that AI and machine learning job postings have increased significantly, noting a recent figure showing a 450 percent rise, far outpacing available expertise.

Technical Silos Are Creating a New Skills Crisis

The discussion emphasized a growing gap across disciplines. Electrical, mechanical, IT, and data science teams frequently operate in isolation despite the interdependent nature of modern AI data centers. This fragmentation leads to delays, inefficiencies, and architectures unable to handle today’s dynamic workloads. Smith described the shift from traditional “white space versus black space” to today’s “blended gray space”, where cross-functional knowledge is essential. Mahmood added that the inability to transfer knowledge horizontally and vertically across teams is a major obstacle to scaling AI systems.

Energy Innovation Is Essential for AI Expansion

AI’s spiking, unpredictable workloads challenge a grid that was never designed for ultra-dense compute. Mahmood and Smith both pointed to advanced energy storage solutions, including ZincFive’s high-power nickel-zinc technology, as the key to unlocking performance. These innovations smooth electrical spikes, maximize usable capacity, and support emerging off-grid compute models that reduce dependence on constrained utilities.

Preparing the Future AI Workforce

Both speakers agreed that organizations must treat talent as core infrastructure. That means forecasting future skills, investing in upskilling programs, partnering with universities, and fostering environments where engineers can innovate across disciplines. As Smith noted, the strongest teams of tomorrow will be adaptive, coachable, and ready to evolve alongside rapidly changing AI infrastructure demands.

Watch the webinar below:

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As AI adoption accelerates worldwide, power infrastructure has become one of the biggest constraints for data center growth. ZincFive, a global leader in nickel-zinc (NiZn) battery technologies, has taken a major step in meeting this challenge with the close of an oversubscribed $30 million Series F funding round. The investment brings total capital raised to $254 million since 2016 and will enable rapid expansion in manufacturing and commercial scale.

Backed by leading climate and industrial investors including Helios Climate Ventures, Climate Investment (CI), Japan Energy Fund, General Ventures, and Clear Creek Investments, ZincFive has already deployed or contracted nearly 2 GW of nickel-zinc backup cabinets across the global data center sector. This milestone reflects both the maturity of its technology and the confidence of hyperscalers and operators seeking safe, sustainable power alternatives.

The funding announcement follows the launch of BC 2 AI, the first nickel-zinc UPS battery cabinet engineered for AI-driven data centers and their dynamic power requirements. With zero thermal-runaway risk, AI load support, and a 96 percent recyclable design, BC 2 AI demonstrates ZincFive’s commitment to continuous improvement from core chemistry to full system architecture.

A Sustainable, Proven Alternative

ZincFive’s patented NiZn chemistry provides high power density, inherent safety, minimal maintenance requirements, and an industry-leading environmental footprint compared to lithium-ion and lead-acid systems. With nearly a decade of proven field performance and expanding OEM partnerships, ZincFive continues to advance its role in next-generation, AI-ready power architectures.

With AI infrastructure driving one of the largest build cycles in modern history, ZincFive’s Series F funding marks a pivotal moment. The company is now positioned to scale production, deepen its commercial reach, and power the safe, sustainable data center ecosystems required for the AI era.

To read the full press release, visit here.

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