How ZincFive's Batteries are Powering the Age of AI

For Brandon Smith, Vice President of Global Sales and Product at ZincFive, the most interesting engineering challenges appear when technology begins to outpace the infrastructure supporting it. Brandon has always been drawn to those moments –  the points where engineers must rethink how systems are designed to keep pace with new demands.

“I’ve always been fascinated by how energy systems underpin everything we rely on,” he says. “When those systems start evolving because technology moves faster than expected, that’s where the most interesting problems are.”

That moment has arrived in the data-centre sector.

AI workloads are reshaping how facilities consume electricity, creating highly dynamic power demand that traditional power systems were never designed to handle. For Brandon, whose career has spanned multiple battery chemistries and critical power technologies, the shift highlights a growing reality: the chemistry behind the battery is becoming as important as the computing hardware it protects.

“When power becomes volatile, the battery chemistry behind the UPS suddenly becomes critical infrastructure,” he says.

Brandon’s path into the industry was not originally planned around batteries or data centres. Trained as an engineer, he initially entered the broader energy sector, drawn by an interest in how large systems work and how they interact with the infrastructure that supports modern society.

But early hands-on experience working with back-up power systems quickly revealed how essential – and often overlooked – that infrastructure can be. Battery systems and uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) sit quietly behind the scenes, ensuring that hospitals, transportation systems and data centres remain operational even when the grid fails.

Over time, Brandon worked across multiple battery technologies, including valve-regulated lead-acid and lithium-ion systems, building a practical understanding of how different chemistries behave in real-world environments.

“When you spend time around these systems, you realise very quickly that the chemistry matters,” he explains. “Different batteries behave very differently when the power environment becomes volatile.”

Today, Brandon leads global product strategy and go-to-market development for ZincFive’s nickel-zinc (NiZn) battery systems, a technology platform the company has spent more than fifteen years developing. His role places him in constant dialogue with hyperscale operators, colocation providers and infrastructure partners as they rethink how power systems must evolve to support AI-scale computing.

During that time, ZincFive has built an intellectual property portfolio of more than 80 patents covering its battery chemistry and manufacturing technologies, while deploying approximately 2GW of nickel-zinc battery systems across critical infrastructure applications worldwide.

Unlike traditional energy storage technologies designed for long-duration discharge, ZincFive’s approach focuses on what the company calls Immediate Power Solutions – systems engineered to deliver very high power for very short periods of time.

“Energy storage is a marathon,” Brandon says. “Immediate power is a sprint.”

That distinction has become increasingly important as AI-driven computing infrastructure pushes power systems in new directions. Modern GPU clusters can ramp rapidly between idle and full computational load, creating sudden spikes in power demand that ripple through the electrical infrastructure of a facility.

“What AI is doing to data-centre power systems is fundamentally different from anything we’ve seen before,” Brandon says.

Many traditional battery technologies were designed primarily to provide several minutes of back-up energy during a grid outage while generators start and synchronise with the facility load. But AI workloads introduce an additional challenge: repeated high-power bursts during normal operation.

Nickel-zinc batteries behave differently under these conditions. Because the chemistry has inherently low internal resistance, NiZn cells can deliver large amounts of power quickly while maintaining stable operating temperatures.

This capability allows ZincFive’s BC 2 AI UPS battery cabinet to perform two roles simultaneously: managing rapid power spikes generated by AI workloads while still providing traditional back-up power during grid disturbances.

“One of the advantages of nickel-zinc is that we don’t have to choose between traditional back-up power and AI performance,” Brandon says. “The same system can handle both.”

The result is a battery infrastructure that can operate with fewer cabinets and reduced oversizing compared with systems designed around chemistries that generate more heat under high-power cycling.

“With nickel-zinc you don’t have to compromise,” Brandon explains. “You get the safety, reliability and footprint required for UPS back-up while still handling the dynamic power behaviour of AI workloads.”

Safety and sustainability are also becoming central considerations for operators evaluating new battery technologies. For Brandon, those priorities were part of what drew him to ZincFive.

“I’ve always been interested in energy because it sits at the intersection of technology, infrastructure and society,” he says. “When you step back and think about it, energy is what enables everything – communications, data, transportation, healthcare. None of it works without reliable power.”

That perspective made ZincFive’s mission particularly compelling.

“The idea behind The Power of Good Chemistry® really resonated with me,” Brandon explains. “If you start with the right chemistry, you can solve multiple problems at once – safety, sustainability and performance. That’s what makes this technology so exciting.”

Nickel-zinc batteries operate with a water-based electrolyte and do not undergo thermal runaway at the cell level, an increasingly important factor as data-centre power densities increase.