[SaaS Series] AI and Automation in Global Energy Infrastructure With Bill Lenihan

Bill Lenihan is the Founder and CEO of ZOLA Intelligence (ZOLAi), a company delivering AI-driven enterprise technology solutions that are transforming energy infrastructure in emerging markets. Under his leadership, ZOLA has expanded across multiple countries, supported hundreds of thousands of off-grid facilities, and secured over $25 million in Series A funding. Bill has held operating and private equity roles at Goldman Sachs, Bain & Co., Calera Capital, and Switch Lighting, shaping his expertise in business expansion. He holds a BA in business and economics from UCLA and an MBA from The Wharton School.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [4:38] Bill Lenihan explains why energy infrastructure remains highly inefficient in emerging markets
• [7:23] Bill’s journey from private equity to solving energy access in emerging markets
• [9:10] The Tanzania visit that revealed the community-wide impact of reliable energy
• [16:07] How the pandemic pushed ZOLAi toward a pure technology focus
• [18:52] Rise of Zola Intelligence through data, workflow knowledge, and AI
• [24:50] Energy as a service as a simpler alternative to customers buying and maintaining hardware
• [31:50] Challenge of reaching telecom CEOs with new energy revenue opportunities
• [41:50] Bill’s advice on building a strong board to accelerate company growth

In this episode…

Across much of the world, access to reliable energy is still expensive, fragmented, and heavily manual. Communities and businesses often rely on outdated systems that are difficult to scale and maintain. What would it take to transform this broken infrastructure into an intelligent, connected energy network?

According to Bill Lenihan, an entrepreneur and operator focused on energy access in emerging markets, the key lies in turning inefficient, fragmented systems into streamlined, intelligent platforms without needing to fully replace what already exists. He highlights the evolution from distributing solar-powered hardware in remote regions to building a data-driven, software-enabled model that improves deployment, maintenance, and financing. A major turning point came when large-scale operational challenges revealed the limits of manual coordination, accelerating a shift toward automation and intelligence. This approach has enabled more scalable, affordable, and sustainable energy access while improving outcomes for end users and operators alike.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, host Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Bill Lenihan, Founder and CEO of ZOLAi, to discuss building an AI-native enterprise to solve global energy challenges. They explore the shift from hardware to software-driven energy services, how automation and AI scale infrastructure in emerging markets, and how data unlocks financing and access. Bill also shares insights on enterprise sales, telecom partnerships, and building a board with relevant operating expertise.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Bill Lenihan on LinkedIn
• ZOLA iNTELLIGENCE
• ZOLAi Software
• Goldman Sachs
• Fremont Group
• Procter and Gamble
• Switch Lighting

Special mention(s):

• David Hatfield on LinkedIn
• Ben Fried on LinkedIn
• Nancy Pfund on LinkedIn
• Herald Chen on LinkedIn
• Lyndon Rive on LinkedIn

Related episodes:

• “[Top Black Business Leader Series] CAbikes: Barefoot until age 17 to PhD at Berkeley -with Christopher Ategeka [Inspiration]” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[SaaS & AI Series] How AI Is Transforming Communication With Sharath Keshava Narayana” on Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable moments:

• “Energy infrastructure in our markets is highly inefficient — we’re using automation and intelligence to fix it.”
• “Three billion people lack reliable energy, and I wanted to work on something big and impactful.”
• “Energy as a service means delivering reliable, affordable power through technology, not hardware.”
• “The pandemic forced us to become a true tech company, accelerating automation and software adoption.”
• “If it doesn’t create value for both customers and the business, it won’t scale — no matter the impact.”

Action steps:

1. Embrace automation and intelligence in operations: Using automation and smart platforms helps replace manual, fragmented processes and improves efficiency, reliability, and cost in complex, underserved markets.
2. Leverage data-driven decision-making: Using operational and customer data improves credit assessment, service design, and reliability, helping expand access to energy solutions where traditional data is limited.
3. Build strategic partnerships with local and global players: Working with telecoms and established utilities accelerates infrastructure access, payments, and customer reach, enabling faster scale and new revenue streams.
4. Adopt scalable, service-based business models: Shifting from hardware to “energy as a service” creates recurring revenue, reduces operational burden, and enables sustainable scaling.
5. Invest in strong mentorship and advisory support: Surrounding leadership with experienced operators, technologists, and financiers helps improve decision-making and avoid costly strategic mistakes.

Episode Transcript

Intro 00:15

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 00:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here. I am the Founder of InspiredInsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different. I have Bill Lenihan, ZOLA iNTELLIGENCE. You can check them out at ZolaIntelligence.com, which will go more into it. And Bill, before I formally introduce you, I’d like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out since this is really, really talking about, you know, emerging markets and helping emerging markets. And it could be a tough space going into emerging markets, and really, enterprise two, two past interviews come to mind. Chris Ategeka, this is one of my favorite interviews over the past 17 years, Bill. Like he was. He was a crazy story. It should be a movie, actually. He grew up in Africa and, with both his parents dying from HIV, he was raised by his grandmother, who was, I think, deaf and mute. He got out of that village to Berkeley, end up starting two nonprofits and to for, you know, two for profits.

And he went back, and he had a bike restoration. It was like a bike where they would restore bikes for ambulances to act as an ambulance because his, one of his siblings died during childbirth because they didn’t get her to the hospital quickly enough. And so he went back. It’s a crazy story, but people can check it out. It’s just super impressive, humble individual. Another one just on the kind of enterprise front, because you have so many challenges and issues to tackle with this business. And selling an enterprise is one of them. And I had Sharath, who’s a founder of Sanas.ai. And it’s basically a speech tool, a speech layer that helps with clearing out the background noise, also smoothing out accents. So people, you know, big health care companies build telecom companies, use them for their reps, they’re answering phones or making calls internally. So people can check that out more on InspiredInsider.com.

This episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25, we help businesses connect their dream relationships and partnerships. We do that in two ways. One, we’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do the strategy, accountability, and full execution. Number two, we’re an easy button for companies gifting. So if you want to stay top of mind for clients, partners, prospects, and even staff, from a cultural perspective. You just send us a list, and we’ll send out the gifts now. And we don’t send out Bill like these tchotchkes, like with a mug or a t-shirt. I like getting food. So we send food out. And so I think sending something every 3 to 4 months for five years to some of our best partners and clients. For me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I always want to give to my relationships. And I found no better way to profile the people I admire than by sending them sweet treats in the mail. So check out Rise25.com.

I am super excited to introduce Bill Lenihan. He’s a career spanning technology, private equity, extensive operations in really, as I talked about, dynamic emerging markets. And he’s recognized that solving the energy crisis really requires more than just the hardware and the foundation of this transition. This transformation is really the combination of deep workflow knowledge, proprietary data, cutting-edge technology, and that kind of forms the core of the AI native enterprise. And so Bill’s Founder and CEO of ZOLA, and as I mentioned, ZolaIntelligence.com, and ZOLAi really. And the company, what they do is they help deploy this powerful convergence of what I just said, which is operations, data, and AI to deliver the world’s first AI native enterprise technology solution and help secure a sustainable, you know, energy for the future. Right? And so, Bill, thanks for joining me. And maybe you can just tell people a little about ZOLAi, ZolaIntelligence.com. They can check it out in what you do.

Bill Lenihan: 04:38

Well, Jeremy, thank you for having me. I feel like you just described our company better than, better than I can. You know, I like to when I do describe it, I need to talk about the markets that we operate in. The theme in our markets is inefficiency. Everything is just really hard, really hard to do. And when I say everything, I mean for business in particular, just to. How do you sell? How do you install? How do you maintain? How you finance and infrastructure is, is no different. The energy infrastructure, in particular, is massively inefficient in our markets. We’re lucky. Living in the US in some ways. We. We all complain about our utilities, but it’s centralized. It’s managed. It flows pretty freely. We just pay for it. And it’s simple. That’s not the case in in emerging markets and emerging markets, as you point out, it’s very hardware-centric.

There is no efficient centralized grid architecture. And basically, the way people get energy is bespoke, distributed. They buy batteries, they buy diesel generators. They install them into their homes, and they maintain them. So that architecture has no automation associated with it, and it has no intelligence associated with it. And that’s really what we do. We come in with that automation and that intelligence layer, and we look to drive efficiency. And when I say efficiency, what we do is we look to drive the cost of energy provision down. And, ultimately, in these markets, the most expensive forms of energy in the world, the average African pays way more than we pay on a price per kilowatt basis. And they get a very bad value proposition and unreliable energy for that. And we’re looking to eliminate it, and we’re looking to eliminate it with automation and intelligence.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 06:40

But when I look at your background, I would not think this guy is going to start an energy company because, you know, UCLA BA Economics, Wharton MBA, private equity. I’m like, oh, this guy is looking at that trajectory. Goldman Sachs and on. I’m like, he’s going to be in private equity. You know, like that’s what he’s going to do. And I would not have guessed starting your own company like this, but maybe take me to that point. I think there was a point where a light went on. I think it was in a hut talk, talking about that. And maybe I don’t know if that’s what shifted things for you.

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