ZOLA iNTELLIGENCE

About Us

Our Vision: Energy Equality for All

Mission: Embed Automation and Intelligence into the World's Most Inefficient Energy Infrastructure

Our Roots

Born out of Off-Grid Electric (later ZOLA Electric) as a door-to-door effort to provide solar in rural Tanzania 15 years ago. This set the foundation for a global movement to transform energy access.

Our Evolution

We recognized early on that the future of energy relies on sustained performance, not just initial connectivity. To meet the complex realities of emerging markets, we evolved from a decentralised solar provider into a comprehensive technology partner, combining a complete hardware stack with intelligent control, data, and software layers.

Who We Are Today

Founded by Bill Lenihan in 2023, ZOLAi was born out of this rich operational history. Today, we deliver the AI-native Agentic Energy Platform that empowers Energy-as-a-Service (EaaS) providers to manage the entire customer journey, from sales through support.

Meet Our Leaders

Our Leadership Team Combines a Dynamic Mix of Employees with Independent Experts to Provide the Strategic Insight and Experience Driving Our Mission.

Bill Lenihan

FOUNDER, CEO

The architect behind ZOLAi’s evolution into an AI native distributed energy technology platform, bringing extensive operational and private equity experience from top-tier firms.

Suresh Karri

Engineering

A technology pioneer with a strong track record of launching large-scale enterprise platforms and connected products across clean energy and smart grids at Proterra and Sunverge.

Johnson Kiwango

Customer Success

An operational driving force with deep EaaS domain experience. Successfully leads the world’s most largest technology enabled EaaS provider for emerging markets.

Mukul Kundu

Product

An MIT-educated product leader who specializes in scaling cloud software, AI-driven climate tech, and energy storage systems at Oracle and Nexant

Barry Yu

Supply Chain

A high-performance operations executive driving global value chains and strategic growth, leveraging his extensive background in scaling international operations during his tenures at ENGIE, JD.COM, and Philips.

David de Villiers

Sales

A renewable energy executive with 20+ years of experience scaling decentralized solar and mini-grid solutions across developing markets at ENGIE Energy Access.

Board Members

Bill Lenihan

Chairman of the Board

The architect behind ZOLAi’s evolution into an AI native distributed energy technology platform, bringing extensive operational and private equity experience from top-tier firms.

David Hatfield

Board Member

Veteran cloud infrastructure executive known for scaling tech giants like Pure Storage to multi-billion-dollar enterprises.

Ben Fried

Board Member

Former Google CIO and large-scale systems expert; provides ZOLAi with the deep technical architecture and AI-infrastructure expertise required for global scale.

Nancy Pfund

Board Advisor

Impact investing pioneer and DBL Partners founder; provides ZOLAi with unmatched expertise in ESG-driven enterprise and sustainable global scaling.

Herald Chen

Board Advisor

Prominent tech and finance leader with a background at KKR and AppLovin; brings sophisticated financial and operating capability to ZOLAi's growth and scale strategy.

Lyndon Rive

Board Advisor

A serial entrepreneur and co-founder of SolarCity (acquired by Tesla) and Everdream (acquired by Dell), Lyndon specializes in scaling impactful software and distributed systems through innovative leadership.