Zanskar raises $115M Series C Following Record-Setting Year of Geothermal Discoveries

Zanskar will use the funding to expand its AI discovery platform and to begin building geothermal power plants at sites it has discovered within its multi-gigawatt geothermal pipeline

SALT LAKE CITY, Jan. 21, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Zanskar, a company using custom-built AI to become the world’s most successful geothermal explorer, today announced a $115 million Series C funding round led by Spring Lane Capital. The round included participation from Obvious Ventures, who led the Series B; Union Square Ventures and Lowercarbon Capital, who co-led the Series A; and more than a dozen other notable energy and technology investors, including Munich Re Ventures, Susquehanna Sustainable Investments, Clearvision Ventures, Orion Industrial Ventures, Safar Partners, Imperative Ventures, StepStone Group, University Growth Fund, Cross Creek, GVP Climate, Tranquillion, Carica Sustainable Investments, UP.Partners, and the All Aboard Fund; and brings Zanskar’s total equity funding to date to $180 million.

This Series C positions Zanskar for rapid growth by enabling the company to advance its gigawatt-scale pipeline through a historic geothermal exploration and development campaign. Zanskar will spearhead one of the largest ever expansions of American geothermal power supporting construction on multiple geothermal power plants throughout the Western U.S., which are slated to begin delivering power before 2030. Zanskar will also expand its industry leading discovery platform and exploration drilling programs, and establish new relationships with strategic partners and customers.

This round marks the largest venture investment to date into AI-enabled discovery of geothermal resources, signaling a decisive shift in market confidence toward the commercial potential of undiscovered, naturally-occurring geothermal systems. By uncovering gigawatts of new geothermal potential in just a few years, and at a fraction of the traditional cost, Zanskar has proven that high-grade natural systems aren't rare: they are just hidden. This disrupts conventional thinking that these systems are too risky or too constrained to develop at any meaningful scale, and sets the stage for rapid growth in the geothermal sector.

“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,” said Carl Hoiland, CEO and Co-founder of Zanskar. “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.”

Zanskar’s AI-native platform is a unified operating system for geothermal discovery and development that lowers discovery costs and increases the size of each geothermal field. Zanskar’s unique approach of marrying boots-on-the-ground geoscience with custom built software and AI tools has empowered Zanskar to collapse discovery timeframes and costs relative to industry best practices. This has firmly established Zanskar as the leading geothermal exploration company.

“Spring Lane is excited to lead the Series C financing for Zanskar and join the Board of the company,” said Jason Scott, Partner and Entrepreneur in Residence, Spring Lane Capital. "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.”

“The world class team at Zanskar is exactly what this country needs: fast, disciplined and very effective,” said Andrew Beebe, Managing Director at Obvious Ventures. “They are positioning geothermal to be one of the cheapest, cleanest and safest energy sources in America—right when we need it most.”

“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,” said Joel Edwards, co-founder and CTO of Zanskar. “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.”

As the U.S. races toward meeting demand for baseload power, and hyperscalers seek out clean, firm power for their data centers, Zanskar is positioned to deliver gigawatts of power—proving AI has the ability to help meet its own power demands. As it builds out geothermal power plants across the U.S., Zanskar seeks out engineers, developers, financers and others to join the team to help discover and deliver geothermal power at a pace, scale, and cost that solves energy, forever.

About Zanskar
Zanskar is the first AI-native geothermal energy company using AI to transform how we find, assess, and deliver geothermal energy. Combining artificial intelligence, modern drilling, and computational geoscience, Zanskar is expanding the frontier of American geothermal discovery, unlocking value from hidden, forgotten, or underutilized geothermal fields. Following the historic turnaround of Lightning Dock in New Mexico, now the site of the most productive pumped geothermal well in the United States, and record-breaking discoveries at Pumpernickel and Big Blind in Nevada, Zanskar is showing that geothermal can be predictable, profitable, and massively scalable. Zanskar is actively deploying this model across a growing portfolio of newly discovered or overlooked sites to develop, build, own, and operate high-grade geothermal assets as a foundational component of the modern grid. Learn more: https://www.zanskar.com/.

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The Zanskar Team, January 2026

Zanskar, a company using custom-built AI to become the world’s most successful geothermal explorer, announced a $115 million Series C funding round.

Zanskar in the Field

Marrying boots-on-the-ground geoscience with custom built software and AI tools, Zanskar is spearhead one of the largest ever expansions of American geothermal power

LDG Rig and Plant

With the funding, Zanskar will begin building geothermal power plants at sites it has discovered throughout the U.S. Southwest.

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