When Saudi Arabia announced its $100 billion Transcendence AI Initiative and the UAE unveiled its 5-gigawatt Abu Dhabi AI campus in 2025, the headlines focused on the staggering investment figures and geopolitical implications. But buried in the technical specifications of these mega-projects lies a more fundamental question: Can the Middle East’s power infrastructure support its AI ambitions?

The answer requires examining not just power generation capacity, but the entire regional power ecosystem: from the pioneering GCC super grid that has quietly interconnected the power grids of six countries into a single, resilient network since 2009, to the ambitious Red Sea cable projects linking Saudi Arabia to Egypt and beyond.

The competition between Saudi Arabia and the UAE for Middle East AI dominance has produced investment announcements that dwarf most national infrastructure budgets. Beyond the Saudi Transcendence initiative, the kingdom secured $600 billion in AI infrastructure partnerships during Trump’s 2025 visit, Oracle’s $14 billion commitment to cloud infrastructure, and AWS’s $5.3 billion Saudi region development. The UAE has responded with equally massive commitments: the 5-gigawatt G42 AI campus—one of the world’s largest—the$500 billion Stargate project in partnership with OpenAI and SoftBank, and plans to deploy significantly more capacity beyond the current 100 MW Khazna facilities.

The Infrastructure Reality Gap

These AI investments represent a fundamental break from previous infrastructure planning. A comprehensive 2022 analysis of Saudi Arabia’s electrical energy future projected methodical growth based on population expansion and traditional energy demand patterns, anticipating peak demand growth to 84 GW by 2030 from 62.3 GW in 2020, with a total generation capacity target of 123 GW by 2032.

What the 2022 planning didn’t anticipate was the AI infrastructure explosion: NEOM’s 1.5 GW net-zero AI data center, G42’s 5 GW AI campus (equivalent to 8% of Saudi Arabia’s 2020 peak demand), and the reality that AI-focused data centers require up to 10 times more power than traditional facilities. Traditional data centers operate at 5-10 kW per rack, while AI data centers require 60 or more KW per rack. This 6-12x power density increase, combined with gigawatt-scale facility announcements, represents 5-10 GW of unexpected concentrated demand that wasn’t in any 2022 planning scenarios.

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From a pure generation perspective, Saudi Arabia appears positioned to handle this challenge, with current capacity around 66 GW and the region’s abundant energy resources. However, the challenge extends far beyond total power generation to encompass power quality, delivery infrastructure, and cooling systems operating in extreme climates where temperatures can easily reach 50° Celsius during summer.

Regional Grid Foundation: A $50 Trillion Vision Already in Motion

The Middle East isn’t starting power grid integration from scratch. The GCC Interconnection Authority has united the power grids of UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, and Kuwait into a single, resilient network since 2009. The 400-kV GCC super grid represents a sophisticated engineering achievement, featuring high-voltage direct current (HVDC) systems that connect 50 Hz systems (UAE, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain) to Saudi Arabia’s 60 Hz system through 1,200-MW HVDC installations with centralized control from GCCIA’s center in Ghunan, Saudi Arabia.

The most ambitious expansion is the Saudi Arabia-Egypt electricity interconnection, representing the first large-scale HVDC link between Middle East and North Africa. This 1,350-km route combines overhead lines and Red Sea subsea cables, with 3 GW total exchange capacity and $1.8 billion investment. Twenty-two-kilometer-long underwater cables are installed/ being installed in the Red Sea, with the first 1.5 GW currently in trial operations.

Regional grid ambitions extend to transcontinental connections: India is planning to link its power grid with Saudi Arabia and the UAE through undersea cables, while the EuroAfrica Interconnector will provide a 2 GW link from Egypt to Cyprus, Crete, and mainland Greece. Such ventures would ultimately tie the GCC, the eastern Mediterranean, and North Africa to Europe to the west and north, and south and central Asia to the east, in a transcontinental grid.

The Technical Challenge: Where AI Meets Reality

While the Middle East offers significant advantages—electricity tariffs ranging from US$0.05 to US$0.06 per kWh, well below the US average of US$0.09 to US$0.15 per kWh, and abundant energy resources—AI creates unprecedented technical challenges. Power delivery challenges in most markets are driven by limitations in interconnecting to the transmission grid, rather than an inability to generate the power, and moving gigawatt-scale power to specific AI facility locations creates transmission bottlenecks that traditional grid infrastructure wasn’t designed to handle.

AI’s microsecond-scale power variation requirements demand a level of power quality that exceeds conventional grid standards, while integrating massive, variable AI loads threatens to destabilize networks designed for predictable, distributed demand patterns. Cooling infrastructure presents equally daunting challenges. Traditional air-cooled chillers, which rely on very cold water (around 4-6°C), struggle when ambient temperatures exceed 50°C, consuming substantial energy. AI compounds this exponentially: air cooling becomes inefficient above 50 kW per rack, necessitating liquid cooling solutions that are both more complex and energy-intensive. In extreme Middle Eastern climates, cooling infrastructure can consume 50% or more of a facility’s total power, creating a compounding effect where AI’s higher power density hinges on even more cooling power.

These challenges require advanced power infrastructure solutions. Traditional UPS systems designed for gradual power ramps can’t handle AI’s microsecond-scale power variations, creating reliability risks that could undermine billion-dollar infrastructure investments. Immediate Power Solutions (IPS) deliver high-rate power instantly, enabling infrastructure to be right-sized for normal operation while meeting peak demand during power surges.

Propelling IPS Innovation

These IPS architecture requirements have driven innovation in the battery technology sector, with companies like ZincFive developing specialized solutions for AI workloads.

At ZincFive, we deliver high-power nickel-zinc (NiZn) battery systems for UPS and other mission-critical applications. Built on NiZn chemistry, our Immediate Power Solutions respond to millisecond-level AI power fluctuations while supporting conventional base-load and backup demands—without the safety, sustainability, footprint, or cost tradeoffs of legacy battery chemistries.

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This versatility addresses a critical gap in the market, where operators need solutions that can support both legacy IT infrastructure and next-generation AI workloads in the same facility. This approach is exemplified by ZincFive’s BC 2 AI UPS Battery Cabinet, which integrates immediate, high-rate power delivery and reliable backup in a compact, data center–ready footprint.

In addition, ZincFive has already prepared for the extensive EU Battery Regulation 2023/1542, which lays out unprecedented requirements for supply chain transparency and environmental compliance. Technologies that have navigated this regulatory framework—demonstrating compliance with the world’s most stringent standards—offer crucial advantages for Middle East operators seeking international partnerships and investor confidence.

The Path Forward: Transformation, Not Just Scaling

Goldman Sachs Research currently estimates the power usage by the global data center market to be around 55 gigawatts (as of their recent reports), and projects power demand will reach 84 GW by 2027, with AI growing to 27% of the overall market. The Middle East can capture a significant portion of this growth, but success requires recognizing that this isn’t just a scaling challenge—it’s a transformation challenge.

While the region’s energy resources and the 400-kV GCC super grid provide a world-class foundation, the era of theoretical planning is over. The transition from 2022 projections to the 2026 ‘AI Reality’—marked by trial operations of the Saudi-Egypt interconnection and record-breaking solar deployments—demands an unprecedented level of infrastructure sophistication. Success now hinges on more than just scale; it requires real-time grid integration for gigawatt-class campuses, AI-optimized cooling that defies 50°C summer peaks, and a highly resilient regional network capable of balancing constant AI pulse loads with the variable output of 12+ GW of new solar capacity.In order for the Middle East to recognize its AI dreams, advanced power infrastructure deployment will need to be accelerated and cooling technologies will need to be addressed proactively. And, the region should consider leveraging the recent regulatory work that the EU has put in place, which prioritizes sustainability.

The Middle East’s AI race isn’t just about who can invest the most—it’s about whether the region can collaborate to build connected power infrastructure that is sophisticated enough to underpin massive AI workloads.

Previously published by Intelligent CIO Middle East 

Author

Brandon Smith

VP of Global Sales and Product

Brandon Smith is the Vice President of Global Sales and Product at ZincFive, where he leads global go-to-market strategy and product direction for the company’s nickel-zinc (NiZn) battery systems, including BC Series battery cabinets and in-rack backup solutions for mission-critical environments. With a background spanning engineering, business development, and product leadership, he brings a practical, end-to-end understanding of how power systems are designed, deployed, and scaled in real-world data center operations. At ZincFive, Brandon partners with hyperscale, colocation, and enterprise operators to deploy power systems that deliver reliability, performance, and sustainability at scale.

AI investment has catapulted data center expansion beyond any previous computing wave. But growth is only part of the story. What the industry is discovering, often the hard way, is that AI doesn’t simply demand more power. It changes how power moves.

Large GPU clusters can shift from low utilization to peak demand in milliseconds, creating rapid, repeated step-load surges that strain power quality and stress infrastructure designed for steadier workloads. At ZincFive, we call this AI Dynamic Power: not just higher demand, but volatility, fast changes that occur frequently and with little time to react. Volatility and emerging power demand needs change the design problem entirely. A power system built to handle steady growth isn’t automatically equipped to handle fast, repeated surges without paying a price somewhere else.

The scale of that challenge is significant. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates data centers consumed about 415 TWh in 2024, around 1.5% of global electricity, and projects that figure could more than double to roughly 945 TWh by 2030, with accelerated computing for AI as a major driver.

The Regulatory and Procurement Reality

Circularity has shifted from an aspirational goal to a design constraint in Europe and a high-stakes competitive hurdle everywhere else. Under the EU’s recast Energy Efficiency Directive, large data centers must report standardized energy and sustainability KPIs into a European database, with annual reporting ongoing and a public-facing energy efficiency label forthcoming that covers energy and water use and share of renewables. The EU Battery Regulation adds recycling mandates and carbon footprint declaration requirements, with labeling rules taking effect this year.

This isn’t only policy. It’s procurement reality. In the 2025 Data Center Energy Storage Industry Insights Report done by ZincFive in partnership with Data Center Frontier, 87% of data center professionals said sustainability is a priority, and 72% reported moderate or significant cost reductions from sustainability efforts. Sustainability is becoming measurable, and increasingly, economically visible.

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Why Overbuilding Isn’t a Long-Term Solution 

When AI introduces volatility, the instinct is to add more: more capacity, more redundancy, more layers of hardware and batteries to absorb the shock. The problem is that overdesign is costly, and the cost isn’t only capital expenditure.

Overdesign consumes materials and space. It increases battery quantity beyond what runtime alone requires, driving architectures that stack multiple systems to handle different parts of the problem — one technology for fast transients, another for backup energy. The result is more hardware to manufacture, deploy, maintain, and ultimately retire. That is exactly the lifecycle burden that circularity mandates are designed to reduce.

Data center operators are already feeling this pressure. In the same industry insights report, respondents cited increased energy-efficiency requirements (55%) and the need for higher power density and smaller footprints (54%) as AI’s biggest impacts on power and energy storage. AI is not only increasing demand, it’s forcing the right-sizing conversation. And in that conversation, the most sustainable architecture is often not the one with the most equipment. It’s the one that maintains performance and resilience with the least overbuild.

Mitigation at the Source

If emerging demands and volatility is the defining characteristic of AI Dynamic Power, mitigation must start where those emerging power demands show up first: inside the data center, close to the UPS and critical power path.

A centralized battery system placed near the UPS intercepts sudden surges before they ripple through the rest of the electrical chain. The battery absorbs brief, high-intensity peaks and discharges during rapid troughs, smoothing the power curve. That approach creates three downstream benefits. It reduces stress on upstream distribution and helps maintain power quality. It protects usable compute, keeping GPU clusters operating at full intended performance rather than forcing throttling or derating to stay within electrical limits.

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This is the role ZincFive’s nickel-zinc (NiZn) technology is built for. NiZn is industry-leading in power density engineered for power delivery and rapid response, precisely the profile that AI Dynamic Power demands. Its non-flammable aqueous electrolyte eliminates the thermal runaway risk associated with lithium-ion, removing the need for suppression systems, added clearance space, and the operational complexity that increases cost, footprint, and carbon impact. Safety, in this case, is an architectural advantage.

ZincFive’s BC 2 AI UPS Battery Cabinet translates those chemistry advantages into a system engineered specifically for AI infrastructure. Built on high-rate NiZn batteries, BC 2 AI is designed to inject and absorb large bursts of power in milliseconds, allowing it to stabilize the rapid load swings created by GPU clusters before those fluctuations propagate through the UPS and upstream electrical infrastructure. Unlike conventional battery systems built primarily for energy storage, BC 2 AI is optimized for rapid   power cycling, enabling it to repeat this sequence millions of times over its lifetime. The cabinet effectively serves a dual purpose: actively smoothing AI dynamic power during normal operation while also providing reliable short-duration runtime protection during outages. 

By managing volatility at the battery layer, BC 2 AI allows operators to support high-density AI workloads without overbuilding data center infrastructure.

Power Infrastructure That Is Both Reliable and Responsible

Nickel-zinc batteries deliver reliable performance without compromising safety. Unlike lithium-based chemistries – which may require system shutdowns via battery management systems (BMS) to prevent thermal events – NiZn systems remain operational even when individual cells become weak or depleted, ensuring uninterrupted performance and minimal downtime.

The sustainability case for nickel-zinc technology is equally strong over the full lifecycle. ZincFive’s BC 2 Series UPS Battery Cabinets feature highly recyclable design. At end-of-life, the vast majority of materials are recovered and reused, a recovery rate that lithium-ion systems still struggle to achieve at scale. That performance translates directly to impact: end-of-life recycling offsets more than two metric tons of CO₂-equivalent emissions per cabinet (source: PEP ecopassport). The BC 2 Series is also designed to address both transient response and runtime requirements in a single, modular architecture, reducing the incentive to stack multiple technologies and lowering the total material burden from the outset.

The Accountability Era

The industry is moving toward an environment where power behavior influences grid access, permitting timelines, and procurement scores. How a facility manages volatility — and how responsibly it accounts for the lifecycle of the equipment doing that work — will increasingly shape what operators can build, where they can build it, and at what cost.

The operators who treat power mitigation as a design discipline rather than an afterthought will hold a structural advantage. In the AI era, power can’t just keep up. It has to behave well, and account for itself throughout its entire life.

Previously published by Data Center Dynamics 

Author

Brandon Smith

VP of Global Sales and Product

Brandon Smith is the Vice President of Global Sales and Product at ZincFive, where he leads global go-to-market strategy and product direction for the company’s nickel-zinc (NiZn) battery systems, including BC Series battery cabinets and in-rack backup solutions for mission-critical environments. With a background spanning engineering, business development, and product leadership, he brings a practical, end-to-end understanding of how power systems are designed, deployed, and scaled in real-world data center operations. At ZincFive, Brandon partners with hyperscale, colocation, and enterprise operators to deploy power systems that deliver reliability, performance, and sustainability at scale.

Artificial intelligence is transforming industries at an unprecedented pace – and data centers are feeling the strain. The same systems enabling the next wave of innovation are exposing the limits of legacy power infrastructure. Power can’t just keep up anymore – it has to think fast.   

The AI Dynamic Power Challenge 

AI workloads behave unlike anything the data-center world has seen before. Instead of drawing steady power, GPU clusters fluctuate wildly – surging to 15 times their idle load within milliseconds, sometimes multiple times per second. These rapid pulses, known as AI Dynamic Power, generate electrical shockwaves that ripple from the IT rack to the grid. 

Legacy UPS and critical power architectures were built for predictable curves, not these sharp, jagged spikes. The result is instability, degraded power quality, and elevated operational risk. The only way forward is to manage volatility where it begins – inside the data center itself – by intercepting surges before they cascade through the system. 

From Backup to Active Partner 

In AI-driven environments, batteries are no longer just emergency backup. They’re the first line of defense – absorbing millisecond-level power spikes, stabilizing voltage, and recharging during low-demand intervals.  

But chemistry matters. 

• Lead-acid struggles to withstand the constant high-power cycling. 

• Lithium-ion offers energy density but introduces heat buildup, accelerated aging, and thermal-runaway risk when exposed to high-power cycles. 

• Supercapacitors react quickly and manage power well but lack energy density and scalability. 

What AI demands is immediate power – fast, safe, sustainable, and always ready. 

Nickel-Zinc: Power Without Compromise 

Nickel-zinc (NiZn) technology was engineered precisely for this moment. Delivering up to three times the power density of legacy chemistries at half the footprint and one-third the weight, NiZn responds instantly to transient loads while operating safely across a wide temperature range – with no thermal-runaway risk, no flammable components, and no permitting issues with local jurisdictions. 

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Beyond its chemistry, NiZn represents a philosophy of continuous improvement. With nearly two gigawatts of power systems delivered or contracted worldwide, ZincFive incorporates lessons from every deployment to refine cabinet designs, controls, and battery-management systems. UL-tested performance, global field data, and real-world customer feedback are incorporated into the next generation of products. Every installation isn’t just an endpoint – it’s an input. 

BC 2 AI: Built for the Pulse of Progress 

This commitment to evolution culminates in the BC 2 AI – the latest generation in ZincFive’s proven BC Series. Purpose-built for AI dynamic loads, the BC 2 AI delivers both surge absorption and runtime assurance in one intelligent, modular system. 

Its advanced battery-management system enables millisecond response to transient surges, while its dual-purpose design supports both high-frequency cycling and sustained backup. NiZn batteries can support millions of high-intensity cycles over the 10-year warranty period. Since nickel-zinc batteries have high millisecond cycle count coupled with industry leading power density the BC 2 AI significantly shrinks footprint by replacing multiple systems with one, reducingoverdesign of critical infrastructure and lowering both CAPEX and OPEX.  

And because the BC 2 AI is designed with the future in mind, it integrates seamlessly with megawatt-class UPS systems – both backward and forward compatible – for today but also incorporates design futures tomorrow’s UPS systems will require to handle AI dynamic workloads, helping operators evolve without disruption. 

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Like every evolution of the BC Series, BC 2 AI is the result of our continuous improvement philosophy – taking lessons from real-world deployments to advance both our chemistry and system-level design. 

Sustainability Designed In 

In today’s data centers, sustainability isn’t a checkbox – it’s a business driver. According to the 2025 Data Center Energy Storage Industry Insights Report, 87% of operators rank sustainability as a top factor in power-system selection. NiZnmakes it achievable without sacrifice. 

• 25–50% lower lifecycle emissions than lithium-ion or lead-acid 

• Recyclable, globally available materials 

• Longer lifespan and fewer replacements, reducing waste and downtime 

• No cobalt, lead, or volatile electrolytes – simplifying compliance and operations 

This isn’t sustainability as an afterthought – its responsibility built into the design. NiZn’s chemistry aligns naturally with ESG frameworks and regulatory standards like the EU Battery Regulation and Scope 3 emissions accounting. 

Continuous Innovation, Proven in the Field 

AI is accelerating the pace of change – and power systems must evolve just as fast. At ZincFive, innovation isn’t an event; it’s an ongoing process fueled by field experience, customer collaboration, and real-world data. Each generation of NiZn products builds on the last, refined through rigorous UL testing and lessons from almost two gigawatts of power delivered and contracted worldwide. 

As AI workloads grow more dynamic and sustainability goals tighten, ZincFive’s mission remains constant: to engineer immediate, intelligent, and inherently safe power that performs today and prepares for tomorrow. 

Immediate. Intelligent. Evolving. That’s the power behind what’s next.

Previously published by Data Center Dynamics 

Author

Tod Higinbotham

CEO, ZincFive

Tod has a strong track record of successfully growing advanced materials companies in the energy storage, semiconductor, and solar markets. He served as Executive VP/GM for ATMI and led the rapid growth of the company, which sold more than $1 billion. Tod was an executive member of the leadership team at Advanced Silicon Materials, a world leader in high-purity silicon materials, the business that was sold to REC to form their solar materials business. He was formerly the CEO of PowerGenix, the company that pioneered the novel nickel-zinc battery technology that has become the core of ZincFive’s solution portfolio.

The insatiable global appetite for compute – intensified by the AI era – continues to drive exceptional demands on data center infrastructure, prompting many enterprises to build new data centers and/or retrofit existing ones.

This rapid deployment of new data centers presents challenges as companies grapple with availability of real estate, utilities and power, particularly in prime locations. Addressing these challenges means rethinking traditional infrastructure approaches and data center designs with a particular focus on rack power demands.

Power density has become a critical metric for data center operators in a world where some GPUs designed for AI workloads consume more power at peak usage than the average American household. Open AI estimates that the compute demand for AI training has doubled every 3.4 months since 2012, seven times the speed of Moore’s Law, and shows no signs of abating.  This unprecedented pace of growth is driving a surge in power requirements, highlighting the need for data centers to support high-density racks that can accommodate powerful equipment.

The Growing Need for Higher Rack Power Density

U.S. data center power consumption is expected to reach 35GW by 2030, nearly doubling its 2022 level, according to a report by Newmark. Hyperscalers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, which support large-scale cloud and enterprise workloads, will need to handle 40-60kW per rack or more to keep pace with demand.

In this environment, power density emerges as a strategic imperative for data center operators looking to future-proof their infrastructure.

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Challenges in Prime Locations

The constraints of power and real estate in high-demand regions amplify the importance of density. As the world’s largest data center market, Northern Virginia exemplifies these challenges. With over 300 data centers and more than 2,500 MW of capacity, the region has reached a saturation point. In 2022, development paused due to limited power availability and growing opposition to new projects encroaching on residential areas and historic sites.

This scenario is not unique to Northern Virginia. Across the globe, data center operators grapple with similar constraints in prime locations. The solution lies in maximizing power efficiency and density to extract more value from existing facilities and minimize the need for expansive real estate footprints.

Benefits & Challenges of High-Density Racks

By increasing power per rack, data centers gain flexibility in how they expand and optimize resources. Higher-density racks allow operators to either scale up within an existing footprint or reduce the total number of racks required to achieve the same computing output.

For organizations looking to maximize their existing space, deploying high-density racks enables more computing power within the same physical footprint. This approach allows data centers to delay or even avoid costly real estate expansions while making better use of available infrastructure. It also supports growth without requiring major modifications to the facility layout. However, this strategy intensifies challenges related to heat dissipation, necessitating advanced cooling solutions such as liquid cooling or rear-door heat exchangers, which come with higher upfront costs and ongoing maintenance demands. Additionally, increased power density may push existing electrical infrastructure beyond its capacity, requiring upgrades to power distribution units, circuit breakers, and backup power systems.

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Alternatively, organizations can choose to reduce the number of racks while maintaining the same overall capacity. This consolidation minimizes the data center’s physical footprint. However, concentrating more workloads into fewer racks also increases the potential impact of failures, making redundancy and reliability planning even more critical. 

The Role of Uninterruptible Power Supply

As data centers continue to support higher and higher power densities, the role of uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems becomes increasingly critical. UPS systems ensure seamless operations during power outages, safeguarding critical data and applications. Traditionally, lead-acid batteries have been the go-to choice for UPS systems. However, advancements in battery technology are presenting more efficient and sustainable alternatives, such as nickel-zinc (NiZn) battery technology. ZincFive is leading the charge in nickel-zinc immediate power solution innovation, with batteries that deliver three times the power density of traditional lead-acid batteries in a smaller footprint, making them ideal for high-density environments. Their ability to discharge at high rates of power ensures rapid response times, a crucial factor for maintaining continuity in mission-critical operations.

Nickel-zinc batteries are also non-flammable, eliminating the risk of thermal runaway at a cell level — a common safety concern with lithium-ion batteries. This intrinsic safety reduces the need for extensive cooling and fire suppression systems, which traditionally consume around 40% of a data center’s power. By minimizing these auxiliary systems, data center operators can achieve significant improvements in power usage efficiency (PUE), and lower overall Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

Moreover, NiZn immediate power technology offers a sustainable, recyclable backup power solution for data centers with a significantly lower climate impact than lead-acid and lithium, as validated by third-party analysis. Nickel-zinc’s lifetime greenhouse gas emissions are 25-50% lower than lead-acid or lithium-ion alternatives, making it a safer, more environmentally responsible choice.

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Preparing for the Future

As the digital era evolves, high-density racks, efficient power solutions, and forward-thinking designs will enable tomorrow’s data centers to deliver the performance and reliability that modern businesses require. As AI, HPC, and other advanced workloads continue to drive the need for more power in increasingly compact spaces, embracing innovative solutions like alternative battery chemistries and newer technology solutions, such as nickel-zinc, as well as adopting complementary strategies, data center operators can build future-ready infrastructure.

Previously published by EnergyTech

Author

Tod Higinbotham

CEO, ZincFive

Tod has a strong track record of successfully growing advanced materials companies in the energy storage, semiconductor, and solar markets. He served as Executive VP/GM for ATMI and led the rapid growth of the company, which sold more than $1 billion. Tod was an executive member of the leadership team at Advanced Silicon Materials, a world leader in high-purity silicon materials, the business that was sold to REC to form their solar materials business. He was formerly the CEO of PowerGenix, the company that pioneered the novel nickel-zinc battery technology that has become the core of ZincFive’s solution portfolio.