#EP322

Today on the Clean Power Hour, we dive into one of the biggest bottlenecks strangling the clean energy transition: the slow, messy world of zoning, permitting, and early-stage development. Our guests are Julia Wu and Anuj Saigal, co-founders of Spark AI, a Y Combinator-backed platform that has ingested and summarized nearly every zoning code, ordinance, and permitting pathway in the United States.

Julia Wu is CEO and co-founder of Spark AI. She's a software engineer who cut her teeth at Microsoft, Apple (working on Siri), and Brex before founding Spark. Her background spans AI, natural language processing, and financial technology.

Anuj Saigal is the co-founder of Spark AI and a veteran of the energy sector since 2010. He worked at the Department of Energy Loan Programs Office during the Obama administration, then moved through SunEdison, EVgo, and Natto (a video AI telematics company). Anuj has been a developer of utility-scale and distributed generation projects and understands the pain points of permitting and interconnection firsthand.

Key Discussion Points:

• Spark AI uses large language models to aggregate zoning regulations, permitting requirements, local sentiment, and news articles for every jurisdiction in America
• Three core use cases: early-stage greenfield site selection, monitoring projects in development for regulatory changes, and rapid acquisition due diligence
• Standard Solar (Brookfield-owned) reduced acquisition diligence from months to one week, cutting time by 75%
• Dynamic Energy accelerated site screening while improving community sentiment risk assessment
• UGE used Spark to assess a massive portfolio acquisition, determining which parcels had viable zoning paths
• The platform is LLM-neutral, easily swapping between OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepSeek, and other models to optimize for accuracy and speed
• Unlike off-the-shelf AI tools, Spark delivers consistency, accuracy, and citations developers need for trust-but-verify workflows

Connect with Anuj and Julia

Julia Wu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wu-julia/

Anuj Saigal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anujsaigal/

Spark AI Website: https://www.sparkhq.ai/

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