Oregon’s ZincFive Goes Public, and the Pacific Northwest’s Data Boom Gets Louder

ZincFive, a Tualatin-based maker of nickel-zinc batteries for data centers, announced it is going public through a SPAC merger with SparkLabs Group. The deal values the company at around $600 million and will list it on the Nasdaq under the ticker ZFIV.

The company says its revenue more than doubled last year to roughly $66.9 million, with an $81 million order backlog and close to 2 gigawatts of battery systems sold or under contract. The new capital is aimed at scaling production, which today runs through two plants in China, with a U.S. facility under consideration. ZincFive positions its nickel-zinc chemistry as a safer, more compact alternative to the lead-acid and lithium-ion batteries that keep data centers online during power events.

Our take

The Pacific Northwest has quietly become one of the most important data center regions in the country. Cheap hydro power, a cool climate, and tax incentives have pulled hyperscale facilities into Oregon for years, from The Dalles to Hillsboro to Prineville. ZincFive going public is a sign the region is not just hosting data centers anymore, it is building the supply chain behind them.

For local businesses, that is a reminder that the AI infrastructure wave is not a distant national headline. It is happening in our backyard, with local jobs, local suppliers, and real pressure on the regional grid.

The piece we watch most closely as an IT partner is power resilience. Data centers live and die on uptime, and that same principle scales down to every business that depends on its systems. Battery backup, tested failover, and an actual disaster recovery plan are what separate a five-minute blip from a costly, day-long outage.

As AI demand keeps pushing power consumption up across the region, resilience is going to climb the priority list for everyone, from the hyperscalers down to the small and midsize firms we support. It is worth paying attention to who is building the backbone, and ZincFive just raised its hand.