Sector Brief

Batteries & Energy Storage

Companies building the cells, packs, and grid-scale storage systems that decide how much renewable and always-on power the world can actually use.

State of the Industry

Updated 2026-09-10

The key race: volume is table stakes; winning now means the next chemistry and a cell that can clear US tax rules

BloombergNEF still has the world adding 158 GW and 459 GWh of non-pumped-hydro storage in 2026, up 41 percent from the 112 GW and 307 GWh installed in 2025, the first year annual additions crossed 100 GW. That compounding is no longer the interesting contest. SNE Research counted 461.3 GWh of energy-storage cell shipments in the first half of 2026, up 71 percent year over year, with non-China markets taking 56.1 percent of the total for the first time. CATL shipped 125.0 GWh of those cells and held 27.1 percent share. The fight that decides who captures the next decade is whether lithium iron phosphate stays the default, or whether sodium-ion, long-duration non-lithium systems, and FEOC-compliant Western cells split the market that LFP just won.

China's September 1, 2026 consumption tax is the policy that turned that chemistry race into an industrial-policy contest. Lithium-ion cells, packs, and clusters now pay 2 percent, rising to the statutory 4 percent on September 1, 2027, after an 11-year exemption. Sodium-ion, solid-state, and fuel cells stay exempt through the end of 2028. CATL has already moved first: China deliveries of TENER Sodium begin this month, with 1 GWh targeted by year-end and international shipments from June 2027, and the company still says sodium-ion cells reach cost parity with LFP by the end of 2026. BloombergNEF separately expects long-duration storage (six hours or longer) additions to quadruple to about 2 GW in 2026, mostly from non-lithium technologies and concentrated in China, a reminder that the LFP container is no longer the only product the sector is building.

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Who's ahead: CATL still owns cells, but BYD and Sungrow now lead the system, and LG Energy Solution owns the US tax-credit path

On cells, the ranking is stable and Chinese. Behind CATL, SNE Research put EVE Energy at 48.0 GWh (10.4 percent) and Hithium at 46.2 GWh (10.0 percent) in H1 2026, with BYD fourth at 35.7 GWh. Benchmark's parallel tally has the same top three and notes the global top-10, all Chinese, still held 83.3 percent of cell shipments even as that concentration slipped 6.3 points year over year. On assembled systems the order flipped: BYD Energy Storage led H1 2026 BESS shipments with a 9.1 percent share, Sungrow was second at 8.8 percent, and CATL dropped to third at 8 percent. Scale and integration are no longer the same ranking.

Sungrow's first-half print shows what that system lead costs. Storage shipments rose 28 percent to 25 GWh and, for the first time, contributed 50 percent of group revenue (RMB 15.456 billion), overtaking inverters. Group revenue still fell 28.99 percent to RMB 30.912 billion and net profit fell 32.01 percent to RMB 5.259 billion, with storage gross margin down 7.49 points to 32.43 percent. The company is now selling EnerNeo solid-state transformers into AI data centers, with about 2 GWh of firm AIDC storage orders, and is sourcing Samsung SDI cells so it can keep supplying US projects without building a US factory. LG Energy Solution is making the opposite bet: North American LFP plants, including Lansing, Michigan, plus a 10-year, 8,000-tonne-a-year lithium-carbonate offtake with Smackover Lithium in Arkansas signed in August 2026, a fully domestic cathode-to-cell chain aimed at developers who need non-prohibited-foreign-entity cells to keep the investment tax credit. TerraPower is a different kind of storage company on this roster: Kemmerer Unit 1, now in construction, pairs a 345 MWe sodium fast reactor with molten-salt storage that can boost output to 500 MWe for more than 5.5 hours, nuclear baseload that behaves like a multi-hour battery.

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What decides it: a tax that favors sodium, a mine that will not restart on cue, and whether quality survives the rush

The consumption tax is small in isolation, about RMB 0.007 per Wh at a RMB 0.36/Wh cell price, or roughly RMB 7 million per GWh, but it landed on an industry that had just clawed pricing power back. Storage-cell lines are running above 90 percent utilization, mainstream 314Ah cells are tight, and CATL raised its 314Ah list price from RMB 0.414/Wh to RMB 0.423/Wh as the tax took effect, with EVE Energy and Lishen adding explicit 2 percent surcharges on domestic product. Exports stay exempt, so the tax is a domestic-cost and industrial-policy tool, not a global one: it nudges buyers toward sodium-ion and solid-state just as CATL's first TENER Sodium cabinets are due to ship in China.

Upstream supply is not cooperating. CATL's Jianxiawo lepidolite mine, China's largest lithium operation by capacity, is back on care and maintenance after Yichun authorities withdrew its environmental-impact approval following a brief informal restart. Benchmark Mineral Intelligence cut 2026 mined output to 32,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent from 62,500 tonnes and warned the new review could slip into late 2026 or 2027. That is a swing factor for China lithium just as storage demand is tightening cell supply. Quality is the other constraint: at the September 3 World Power Battery Conference, CATL chairman Robin Zeng said more than 600 new vehicle models had launched in China this year and that some traction batteries had already seen batch-level failures, a warning that the same speed-and-price contest now running through grid cells has a safety cost. LG Energy Solution's September Nature Communications paper on lithium-manganese-rich cells (40 Ah cells keeping 92.2 percent energy after 883 cycles) is the Western answer to that chemistry-and-quality problem, a cobalt-free path still aimed at 2027-2028 commercial production rather than this year's deployments.

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The money and the rules: US developers still plan a record year, but only non-Chinese cells keep the tax credit

The US Energy Information Administration's latest inventory still has developers planning 24 GW of utility-scale battery storage in 2026, up from 15 GW added in 2025, second only to solar among new US capacity. About 80 percent of that planned total sits in Texas (12.9 GW), California (3.4 GW), and Arizona (3.2 GW). Projects that begin construction in 2026 must show that at least 55 percent of direct equipment cost comes from non-prohibited foreign entities to keep the investment tax credit, a threshold that rises toward 75 percent by 2030. Because cells are roughly half a grid system's cost, a Chinese cell fails the 2026 test even if every inverter and enclosure is sourced elsewhere. That is why LG Energy Solution's US LFP plants and Smackover offtake, Tesla's Megapack 3 line at the Houston Megafactory, and Sungrow's turn to Samsung SDI cells are the same story told from three sides: the US market is still the second-largest demand pool, and it is closing to China-linked cells.

The commercial consequence is already visible in Sungrow's mix. Storage is now half of sales, yet group profit is down by a third, overseas markets already account for 73.4 percent of revenue, and management is treating the US as a shrinking, higher-risk book rather than a factory destination. Form Energy's iron-air book and Holtec's HI-CLOUD plan to put thermal storage under data-center campuses at retired reactor sites are the long-duration and AI-power versions of the same demand, buyers who cannot wait on interconnection queues and will pay for duration or siting that a four-hour LFP container cannot offer. The capital is still there. The filter is no longer who can make the cheapest 314Ah cell in Ningde.

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What to watch through 2027

Watch whether CATL's TENER Sodium cabinets actually reach China customers in September 2026, whether the 1 GWh year-end shipment target holds, and whether cell-level cost parity with LFP lands by December, the three dates that turn sodium from a tax-advantaged slide into a commercial product. Watch the June 2027 start of international TENER Sodium deliveries, including the Alfen partnership in the Netherlands, and the September 1, 2027 step-up of China's lithium-ion consumption tax to 4 percent, which widens the sodium and solid-state exemption just as CATL and BYD still target small-batch solid-state production in 2027.

Watch whether the EIA's 24 GW of US utility-scale additions actually interconnect, and whether FEOC-compliant cell supply from LG Energy Solution, Samsung SDI, and Tesla's Houston Megapack 3 line is enough to keep those projects credit-eligible. Watch CATL's Debrecen cell start and the Stellantis Zaragoza joint venture's Q1 2027 target, Form Energy's first Minnesota iron-air system in 2026 and Crusoe deliveries in 2027, QuantumScape's H2 2026 Eagle-line output doubling ahead of PowerCo's 2029 start of production, and TerraPower's Kemmerer construction toward a February 2031 complete date plus the promised announcement of a second Natrium plant for an AI data-center customer by the end of 2026. Sungrow's own test is whether H2 shipments close the gap from 25 GWh to a 60 GWh full-year target, and whether the Poland and Egypt factories come online by April 2027 as the US book shrinks.

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Sources

13 Companies

CATL

Public (SZSE: 300750 / HKEX: 3750)

Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Limited (CATL), founded in Ningde, Fujian in 2011 by Robin Zeng and Huang Shilin, is the largest battery manufacturer on Earth and the single most important company in the electrification of transport and the grid. It took 40.2% of global EV battery installations between January and May 2026, roughly three times its nearest rival, and has ranked first worldwide in energy-storage battery shipments for five consecutive years, shipping 121 GWh of storage cells in 2025. FY2025 revenue reached RMB423.7B (about $61B) with net profit up 42% to RMB72.2B, and H1 2026 accelerated hard: revenue of RMB276.9B (up 54.8%) and net profit of RMB43.3B (up 42.0%), with grid storage now nearly a fifth of the business at RMB53.2B. The product line spans the Shenxing superfast-charging LFP battery (third generation charges 10-80% in 3 minutes 44 seconds), the Qilin and Qilin Condensed high-density packs, the Freevoy hybrid battery, the Naxtra sodium-ion battery entering full mass production by the end of 2026, and the TENER grid-storage family, whose sodium-ion variant launched in June 2026. CATL raised $5.2B in a May 2025 Hong Kong listing, the largest IPO in the world that year, and is spending it on a European build-out: a 40 GWh cell plant in Debrecen, Hungary and a 50 GWh LFP joint venture with Stellantis in Zaragoza, Spain. Its technology now reaches the US indirectly through licensing, with Ford's BlueOval Battery Park Michigan starting operations on CATL-licensed LFP chemistry in June 2026, even as CATL itself remains on the Pentagon's Section 1260H list of Chinese military companies.

2011 · 🇨🇳 Ningde, Fujian, China

Form Energy

Private (Series G closed August 2026; listing targeted for 2027)

Form Energy, founded in 2017 by former Tesla energy chief Mateo Jaramillo, MIT professor Yet-Ming Chiang, Ted Wiley, Billy Woodford and Marco Ferrara, is building the storage technology that lithium-ion cannot economically reach: a 100-hour battery. Its iron-air cells run on reversible rusting, oxidising iron with air from the atmosphere to discharge and converting the rust back to iron to charge, using materials so cheap the company claims a cost per kilowatt-hour a fraction of lithium-ion's. That makes multi-day storage viable, the duration Jaramillo argues is where batteries stop shaving peaks and start replacing thermal power plants. The company manufactures at Form Factory 1, a 550,000 square-foot plant in Weirton, West Virginia built on a former tin mill site, which is now in production and has begun delivering its first commercial system, a 1.5 MW / 150 MWh project with Great River Energy in Cambridge, Minnesota. Demand arrived faster than anyone expected once AI data centers started hunting for firm power: Form has more than 80 GWh of commercial projects under agreement, including a 300 MW / 30 GWh system with Google and Xcel Energy announced in February 2026 that Xcel calls the largest battery project by energy capacity ever announced, a 12 GWh capacity agreement with Crusoe for AI data centers starting in 2027, and its first deployment outside the US, a 1 GWh project with FuturEnergy Ireland. Form has raised more than $2B to date, including a $750M Series G led by T. Rowe Price that closed in August 2026, has picked JPMorgan and Jefferies to lead its IPO, and plans to go public in 2027.

2017 · 🇺🇸 Somerville, Massachusetts

LG Energy Solution

Public (KRX: 373220)

LG Energy Solution is the largest battery manufacturer outside China and the West's main hedge against Chinese dominance of the cell supply chain. Spun out of LG Chem on December 1, 2020 from a battery division that dates to 1992, it listed on the Korea Exchange in January 2022 in a KRW12.75 trillion (about $10.7B) offering, still South Korea's largest IPO ever. It ranks third globally in EV batteries with 8.7% share and 41.0 GWh installed between January and May 2026, supplying GM, Tesla, Ford, Hyundai, Stellantis, Honda and Toyota through wholly owned plants in Korea, Poland and Michigan and joint ventures including Ultium Cells with GM, NextStar Energy with Stellantis and L-H Battery with Honda. The interesting part of 2026 is the pivot. With Western EV demand flat and the US federal tax credit gone, LGES has swung its North American capacity toward grid storage: its $1.4B, 1.7-million-square-foot Holland, Michigan plant is the first large-scale LFP cell factory in the United States, is scaling from 17 GWh to more than 30 GWh by the end of 2026, and its output is sold out three to five years ahead. GM and LG are converting an Ultium plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee from EV cells to LFP storage cells outright. The numbers show the transition mid-flight: 2025 revenue fell to KRW23.7T as EV sales slowed, but Q2 2026 revenue jumped 24.8% year over year to KRW7.56T on ESS and cylindrical demand and the company returned to an operating profit of KRW113.3B after three consecutive quarterly losses. Guidance for 2026 is revenue growth in the mid-teens to 20% with ESS sales more than tripling.

2020 · 🇰🇷 Seoul, South Korea

QuantumScape

Public (NASDAQ: QS)

QuantumScape, founded in 2010 by Jagdeep Singh, Tim Holme and Stanford professor Fritz Prinz, is the best-funded Western attempt to make a solid-state lithium-metal battery work at production scale. Its cells replace the graphite anode with lithium metal formed in place and use a ceramic separator to block the dendrites that normally kill such cells. The flagship QSE-5 B-sample delivers 844 Wh/L and 301 Wh/kg with sub-15-minute fast charging, energy density well beyond conventional lithium-ion. The company remains pre-revenue on cells and is engineering rather than inventing now: the proprietary Cobra separator process went into baseline production in June 2025, B1 samples began shipping to automakers in October 2025, and an automated Eagle pilot line was inaugurated in San Jose in February 2026 and is running above 90% core-tool uptime while ramping toward doubled cell output in the second half of 2026. Volkswagen is both its largest shareholder and its industrialisation partner: PowerCo holds rights to produce up to 85 GWh of QSE-5 cells a year, with start of production still targeted for 2029, though a July 2026 amendment cut potential milestone payments from $131M to up to $75.4M. QuantumScape added Honda as a multi-year research partner in June 2026, works with two more top-10 automakers, and has ceramic manufacturing collaborations with Murata and Corning. It has $859M of liquidity, reiterated 2026 guidance of a $250M to $275M adjusted EBITDA loss, and is pushing beyond cars through three formal verticals: QSEV (automotive), QSDC (AI data centers), and QSAS (aerospace and defense) - QSAS has already shipped QSE-5 cells to an undisclosed major American defense prime.

2010 · 🇺🇸 San Jose, California

Sungrow

Public (SZSE: 300274; Hong Kong listing application filed)

Sungrow is the company that turns batteries into a working power plant, and in 2026 Wood Mackenzie ranked it first in the world among battery energy storage system integrators, ahead of Tesla and CATL. Founded in 1997 in Hefei by former university lecturer Cao Renxian on personal savings and borrowed money, it built its business on solar inverters, where it has led or tied for first in global shipments for years, then applied the same power-electronics expertise to grid storage. Storage overtook inverters as its largest business in 2025: energy storage system revenue rose 49.4% to RMB37.29B, or 41.8% of a company total of RMB89.18B, on shipments of 43 GWh (up 53.6%), with overseas volumes up 89% while Sungrow deliberately pulled back from a low-margin Chinese market. Cumulative storage shipments passed 93 GWh by the end of 2025 and the company targets more than 60 GWh in 2026 alone. Growth reversed sharply through H1 2026: revenue fell 28.99% year over year to RMB30.91B and net profit fell 32.01% to RMB5.26B, as falling storage prices, intensifying competition, and a slowdown in China's residential solar market compressed margins - though storage revenue (RMB15.46B, down 13.18% but a smaller drop than the company overall) crossed 50% of total revenue for the first time as PV inverters fell even further. H1 storage shipments still rose 28% to 25 GWh, putting the 60 GWh full-year target within reach if the second half stays strong, while inverter shipments fell to about 66 GW from 76 GW a year earlier and overseas markets accounted for 73.4% of revenue. Its flagship PowerTitan 3.0 platform, launched in June 2025 and brought to Europe as a grid-forming system in January 2026, spans 3.45 MWh 10-foot to 12.5 MWh 30-foot containers built on 684 Ah stacked cells and a fully liquid-cooled silicon-carbide power conversion system reaching 99.3% peak efficiency, with grid-forming features including 20-millisecond reactive response and gigawatt-scale black start. In July 2026 Sungrow also launched EnerNeo, a solid-state transformer for AI data center power delivery, and by early September 2026 it had begun commercial EnerNeo shipments, with about 2 GWh of firm AIDC storage orders and a pipeline above 10 GWh. After unveiling PowerMatrix (a combined PV-storage inverter architecture) at SNEC in June and PowerHarbor (a modular residential battery system) at Intersolar Europe the same month, Sungrow refiled for a Hong Kong listing in April 2026 to fund overseas manufacturing, including new storage factories in Poland and Egypt. The July 2026 US FCC ban on new Chinese-made grid inverter imports briefly wiped out more than RMB100B of Sungrow's market value; the FCC narrowed that ban on August 20, 2026, and management said it expects a gradual US pullback, turning in September 2026 to Samsung SDI cells to keep supplying the US storage market without building a US factory.

1997 · 🇨🇳 Hefei, Anhui, China

Also in this industry

BYD

Public (SZSE: 002594 / HKEX: 1211)

BYD (Build Your Dreams) is a Chinese high-tech manufacturer spanning automobiles, batteries, electronics, renewable energy, and rail transit. Its auto business is unusually vertically integrated, with in-house batteries, motors, power electronics, and automotive semiconductors underpinning a lineup that now ranges from low-cost EVs and plug-in hybrids to premium Denza and Yangwang vehicles. First-half 2026 revenue fell 7.13% YoY to ¥344.82B (~$50.9B) and net profit dropped 20.54% to ¥12.33B as China NEV weakness and foreign-exchange losses outweighed overseas growth; auto-related revenue was ¥275.34B (-8.98%) while gross margin rose to 18.85% from 18.01%. H1 NEV sales were 1,808,511 (-15.72%), with the Q2 decline narrowing to 3.24% after a 30% Q1 drop, and overseas shipments of about 792,000 (+67.8%) making up roughly 44% of H1 volume. August 2026 NEV wholesales reached 440,293 (+17.84% YoY), the highest month of 2026, with a record 189,466 overseas units (43.03% of volume) offsetting still-soft domestic sales. On August 28, 2026 BYD opened its 10,000th FLASH Charging station in Shenzhen, doubling the network in under five months across 325 cities and reaching halfway to its 20,000 year-end target, with 1.83 million users (nearly one-third non-BYD). BYD's Szeged plant in Hungary began trial production in January 2026, but EVP Stella Li said in June 2026 that full-scale series production has slipped to Q4 2026 as equipment is still being installed; the same month BYD put its planned €1B Turkey (Manisa) plant on hold after Ankara withdrew tax incentives, making Hungary its top European manufacturing priority. On September 3, 2026 BYD opened its first Indonesian plant, a ~$632M, 150,000-vehicle/year facility in Subang, West Java (its 13th plant worldwide), and on September 2 BYD Semiconductor began mass-producing an in-house 4D radar chip to further vertically integrate its assisted-driving sensor stack.

1995 · 🇨🇳 Shenzhen, Guangdong, China

Holtec International

Active

Holtec International is a vertically integrated nuclear technology and services company whose core businesses include used-fuel storage and transport systems, plant decommissioning, manufacturing, and nuclear project execution. Its flagship growth program is the restart of the Palisades plant in Michigan, which would be the first U.S. nuclear plant to return from decommissioning to operations status: on August 30, 2026 Holtec began loading fuel into the 204-assembly reactor core, the most visible physical milestone yet, though extensive tests and inspections and a firm restart date still lie ahead. Its other flagship program is the SMR-300 small modular reactor platform, which Holtec is advancing at Palisades and in the UK with EDF. Holtec is also pursuing a large SMR-300 program in India - where a March 2025 U.S. DOE 10CFR810 authorization lets it share the design with partners Tata Consulting Engineers, Larsen & Toubro, and its Holtec Asia subsidiary - with a February 2026 plan to build up to 200 SMR-300s from an expanded manufacturing hub in Gujarat, and in Rwanda, where a May 2026 Comprehensive Development Agreement with the country's Atomic Energy Board targets up to roughly 5 GW of capacity, Holtec's first sub-Saharan African market. After a confidential filing in February 2026, Holtec publicly filed a Form S-1 on July 10, 2026 for a Nasdaq / Nasdaq Texas IPO under the ticker HNUC - the S-1 disclosing $989M of revenue for the 12 months ended March 31, 2026 - in an offering that Renaissance Capital estimates could raise about $2 billion (with press reporting on overall company valuation running as high as roughly $10 billion). An S-1/A amendment filed August 21, 2026 updated the offering's financials through the six months ended June 30, 2026, disclosing $269.9M of revenue (down from $286.6M in the first half of 2025) alongside higher gross operating profit of $118.5M (up from $78.8M). On September 8, 2026 Holtec launched the IPO roadshow at $15 to $18 per share for 50 million Class A shares (up to $900 million, plus a 7.5 million-share greenshoe), targeting a valuation of up to $10.2 billion. Holtec's SMR-300 pipeline now spans Palisades, the Green River, Utah revival project, a newly cleared Oyster Creek, New Jersey site (NRC approved the plant's license termination plan on July 30, 2026, opening the way for four more SMR-300 units there), the Cottam, UK proposal with EDF, and Rwanda - and on August 4, 2026 Holtec signed a non-binding memorandum of agreement with Entergy and Hyundai Engineering & Construction to evaluate further SMR-300 projects across Entergy's Gulf South territory.

1986 · 🇺🇸 Jupiter, Florida

Lucid Motors

Public (NASDAQ: LCID)

Lucid Group is a Silicon Valley EV and technology company building the Lucid Air sedan and Lucid Gravity SUV around proprietary, software-defined vehicle architectures focused on range, efficiency, and performance. Silvio Napoli (formerly chairman and CEO of Schindler) became permanent CEO on June 1, 2026; on June 22 he cut about 18% of staff and eliminated the COO role, with interim-CEO-turned-COO Marc Winterhoff departing effective immediately, and on July 2 he extended the reshuffle with a near-total C-suite overhaul - naming Alexander De Bock incoming CFO (succeeding Taoufiq Boussaid) and Raja Ramana Macha (ex-Eaton EVP and CTO) as chief technology officer, while halving the number of executives reporting directly to him. Q2 2026 deliveries were 3,953 (4,774 produced), and Lucid drew $800M on July 6 then a further $400M on August 24 on its PIF-backed delayed-draw term loan, taking DDTL principal outstanding to $1.7B with about $800M of remaining capacity. On July 14 Lucid's shares briefly crashed as much as 57% to a record intraday low of $2.37 (closing down 16% at $4.62) before the company publicly rejected as 'completely false' a report that restructuring adviser AlixPartners had floated a Chapter 11 or take-private path - reaffirming that AlixPartners is only helping improve operations, that no special board committee exists, and that ~$4.7B of pro forma liquidity is sufficient to fund operations into late 2027; the stock then rebounded sharply, spiking ~29% on July 15 and notching its best week in a year as Napoli reiterated the denial. On July 28, Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal disclosed a passive 5% stake (19,513,000 Class A shares, worth roughly $150M) via SEC Schedule 13G, sending shares up about 20% and adding a new prominent Saudi investor alongside majority shareholder PIF. On August 4, 2026 Lucid reported Q2 2026 revenue of $405M and 4,774 vehicles produced (+24% YoY) alongside a $1.26B net loss (diluted EPS -$3.30) and a deeply negative -105% gross margin that included a $300M inventory impairment, and Napoli unveiled an 'operational reset' targeting $1.4B of 2026 cash savings - roughly $600-800M from inventory, $500M from capital expenditures, and $200M from operating expenses (including the $158M in annualized savings from June's workforce cut) - built around four 'must-win' priorities: cost discipline, the Lucid-Nuro-Uber robotaxi program (Gravity-based PV units now testing in the SF Bay Area and Houston, with regular robotaxi production targeted for Q4 2026 and paying-passenger service still late 2026), the AMP-2 Saudi Arabia factory, and the delayed midsize vehicle - with Cosmos production now pushed back about a year to the second half of 2027 at AMP-2 (Casa Grande to follow), Q3-Q4 production guided below Q2 levels as Casa Grande runs a single shift through year-end, and quarter-end liquidity of $3.0B (plus the subsequent $800M July and $400M August DDTL draws) guiding a runway well into 2027. On August 13, 2026 Lucid unveiled the Gravity GT-S, a 1,070-hp performance flagship trim of the Gravity SUV starting at $125,900 with Q4 2026 deliveries. Lucid's Q2 2026 Form 10-Q disclosed that stockholders' equity had swung to a deficit of $1.06B (from positive $717.3M at year-end 2025) and that the accumulated deficit had passed $17.7B; combined with continued caution about the operational reset's execution, LCID shares slid from an August 4 close of $7.78 to a $4.55 close on September 1 and were $4.63 at the September 8 close (market cap about $1.82B), a 40%+ decline from the reset-day close. Lucid is centered on stabilizing Gravity after a seatbelt recall and supplier-driven production hit, launching its Lucid-Nuro-Uber robotaxi service (San Francisco Bay Area in late 2026, Houston in 2027), scaling the expanded ≥35,000-vehicle Uber partnership, and bringing its lower-cost Atlas-based Cosmos and Earth midsize platform to market as it pushes toward profitability and positive free cash flow.

2007 · 🇺🇸 Newark, California

NIO

Public (NYSE: NIO / HKEX: 9866)

NIO is a Chinese smart electric vehicle manufacturer built around premium EVs, battery swapping, and a multi-brand portfolio spanning NIO, ONVO, and firefly. NIO delivered 35,836 vehicles in August 2026 (+14.5% YoY), split across 21,174 NIO-brand, 8,810 ONVO-brand and 5,852 firefly-brand units, lifting year-to-date deliveries to 262,893 (+57.9% YoY) and cumulative deliveries to 1,260,485. The core NIO brand's pricing power is anchored by the third-generation ES8, which delivered 10,999 units in August (51.95% of NIO-brand volume, YTD 99,946) after topping 140,000 cumulative deliveries on August 21, even as the newer ES9 flagship cooled to 6,315 July deliveries (-26.5% month over month) after crossing 20,000 cumulative on August 8. Q2 2026 posted record revenue of RMB32.14B on 107,658 deliveries but missed guidance as memory-chip costs bit; NIO guided Q3 deliveries of 108,000-111,000. The battery swap network stood at 4,123 stations worldwide as of the Q2 report, with first true Gen-5 stations live from August 7 and 120 million swaps logged. The lineup includes the ES9 flagship executive SUV (900V, 5C charging); ONVO's three-SUV lineup (L60, L80, L90, all with NX9031); and firefly, which handed over its 80,000th vehicle in Hefei on September 5, 2026 - 17 months after the April 2025 launch - and is now live in 10+ overseas markets. On September 2, 2026 NIO opened its first Nio House in Macau and began ES9 deliveries there under a distributor-led model. Shenji's NX9031 has shipped 300,000+ units, and a September 2 report said Geely is evaluating Shenji's 700+ TOPS M97 chip for a dual-chip L3 system (no signed deal).

2014 · 🇨🇳 Shanghai, China

TAE Technologies

Private (proposed TMTG merger; targeted Q4 2026 close)

TAE Technologies is a private fusion company developing hydrogen-boron fusion with a beam-driven field-reversed-configuration architecture. Its 2025 'Norm' breakthrough reduced reactor complexity enough to skip the planned Copernicus step and move directly toward Da Vinci, its first prototype power plant. In 2026 TAE completed its multi-state site evaluation tour for the first 50 MWe plant (Alabama, Ohio, Texas), formally established the TAE Beam UK joint venture with UKAEA at Culham, and is targeting a Q4 2026 close of its $6B all-stock merger with Trump Media & Technology Group. The Form S-4 that would unlock a further $100M of TMTG cash remained unfiled as of September 6, 2026, with TAE's going-public audits still underway; no final plant site has been announced. The company now states more than $1.5B in private capital. TAE Power Solutions and TAE Life Sciences commercialize adjacent power-delivery and oncology technologies derived from its fusion R&D.

1998 · 🇺🇸 Foothill Ranch, California

TerraPower

Active

TerraPower is a nuclear innovation company founded by Bill Gates with two business lines: the Natrium sodium fast reactor with integrated molten-salt energy storage, and TerraPower Isotopes, a medical-isotope business producing actinium-225 for targeted cancer therapies. In March 2026 the NRC issued Kemmerer Unit 1 the first construction permit for a commercial-scale advanced nuclear plant in the U.S., and on April 23, 2026 TerraPower and contractor Bechtel officially began plant construction in Wyoming, a build expected to mobilize roughly 1,600 workers; on July 21, 2026 TerraPower became the first advanced-reactor developer accepted into the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations. In January 2026 TerraPower signed a landmark agreement with Meta to develop up to eight Natrium plants in the U.S., marking a shift from a single demonstration toward a commercial fleet, and on August 14, 2026 it deepened its Korean industrial supply chain with a preliminary joint-business agreement with SK Innovation for South Korea's first commercial Natrium plant, selection of Hyundai Engineering & Construction as EPC contractor for up to eight future Natrium reactors, and a reactor-vessel manufacturing contract with Doosan Enerbility. In August 2026 it named George Wilson, previously SVP of Regulatory Affairs, as its first Chief Nuclear Officer to oversee nuclear safety, licensing, and regulatory strategy, and on August 31 it awarded 12 additional supplier contracts for Kemmerer Unit 1 and an on-site sodium test and fill facility. CEO Chris Levesque told Reuters on September 7, 2026 that Natrium could generate UK electricity by 2034, TerraPower's first market outside the United States, and has said the company still plans to announce a second Natrium project - this one for an unnamed AI data-center customer - before the end of 2026, with construction targeted for 2027. The core reactor business remains pre-revenue, but Natrium has moved from development into full project execution under DOE's ARDP cost-share program, while TerraPower Isotopes already sells actinium-225 commercially to pharmaceutical partners and is building a $450 million second production facility in Philadelphia.

2008 · 🇺🇸 Bellevue, Washington

Tesla

Public (NASDAQ: TSLA)

Tesla is a vertically integrated automotive, energy storage, and AI company headquartered in Austin, Texas. After building its final Model S and Model X on May 10, 2026 and converting that Fremont line to Optimus, it now manufactures three consumer vehicles (Model 3, Model Y, Cybertruck), sells Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software, operates energy storage and solar businesses, runs an unsupervised Robotaxi service across six US metros (Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando, and Tampa), plus a supervised Bay Area pilot, and is ramping new products including Cybercab (in production at Giga Texas since Feb 2026; tesla.com/robotaxi now lists it as a live fleet vehicle after commercial paid rides began in Austin on September 3, 2026, the same day NHTSA opened audit AQ26002, still open as of September 6), Tesla Semi (now in a commissioning phase at the new Nevada line as it works toward a 50,000-unit/year target), and Optimus (entered production on Fremont's converted first-generation line around August 27-28, 2026, feeding an internal training program rather than customer sales; the V3 public reveal remains undated). Tesla China scheduled a mid-September Cybercab display tour in Beijing and Shanghai that it said is not a China sale or China robotaxi launch. On September 7, 2026 Tesla China offered inventory cash incentives through September 30 of 5,000 yuan on Model 3 and 10,000 yuan on Model Y, with some Model 3 trims also eligible for an 8,000 yuan insurance subsidy, bringing advertised starting prices to 222,500 yuan and 253,500 yuan after all listed benefits. In Q2 2026, Tesla generated a record $28.24B in revenue (+26% YoY) on 480,126 vehicle deliveries, though GAAP operating margin narrowed to 1.4% amid heavy AI, Optimus, and Robotaxi investment, and guided to over $25B of full-year 2026 capital expenditure; it had 1.48M active FSD subscriptions and operated 8,704 Supercharger stations.

2003 · 🇺🇸 Austin, Texas

Westinghouse Electric Company

Private (Brookfield & Cameco)

Westinghouse Electric Company is the largest Western nuclear technology company, owned 51% by Brookfield (with institutional partners) and 49% by uranium miner Cameco since their $7.9B acquisition closed in November 2023. Nearly half of the world's operating nuclear reactors are based on Westinghouse technology, and its fuel and operating-plant-services businesses serve PWR, BWR, and VVER fleets globally - generating about $5.0B of revenue in 2025. Its flagship AP1000 reactor is the only fully licensed advanced large reactor operating in the US (Vogtle Units 3 and 4 in Georgia), with four more units operating in China, a global pipeline Westinghouse counts at up to 91 potential reactors (~105 GWe), and orders or advanced programs in Poland, Bulgaria, and Ukraine. In October 2025 the US government announced an $80B+ strategic partnership with Westinghouse, Brookfield, and Cameco to build a fleet of AP1000 and AP300 reactors across the United States, followed in June 2026 by a conditional $17.5B DOE loan commitment to finance long-lead components for up to 10 AP1000s. On July 31, 2026, Westinghouse confidentially filed a draft S-1 registration statement for a US IPO; deal terms from the 2025 government partnership reportedly give the US government an option to take an 8% stake if Westinghouse's valuation reaches $30B. Alongside the large-reactor buildout, Westinghouse is developing the 330 MWe AP300 small modular reactor and the 5 MWe eVinci microreactor, which is slated for first fueled testing at Idaho National Laboratory and was selected for deployment at Malmstrom Air Force Base. Under CEO Dan Sumner, appointed in April 2026, the company sits at the center of the US nuclear renaissance.

1999 · 🇺🇸 Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania

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Palisades nuclear plant restart

Holtec has closed out the last of Palisades' major restart construction projects and, on August 30, 2026, began loading fuel into the reactor core - 204 assemblies of new and partially used fuel - marking the most visible physical step yet toward restart. An August 31 NRC inspection report then cited two green, non-cited radiation-protection violations from December 2025-March 2026 work, including a February airborne-radioactivity event in which required notifications and dose evaluations were not completed; the NRC assigned very low safety significance and issued no penalties. A federal court dismissed the original anti-restart lawsuit on July 3, 2026, but the environmental coalition (Beyond Nuclear, Don't Waste Michigan and allies) appealed that dismissal to two federal circuit courts of appeals in late August 2026, keeping a legal challenge alive without blocking restart activity so far. Extensive NRC-coordinated tests and inspections remain, after which the ~800 MWe unit must be returned to criticality and reconnected to the grid. Completion has slipped from late 2025 and then from February 2026; CEO Kris Singh still expects a 2026 restart, ahead of a March 2027 power-supply contract, but Holtec has declined to set a firm date. Success would make Palisades the first U.S. nuclear plant to return to service after entering decommissioning.

2026 (no firm date)

Holtec International

Advance the confidential IPO process toward public listing

Following the July 31, 2026 confidential S-1 submission, watch for Westinghouse's public filing, share count, price range, and listing timeline, all still undetermined and subject to market conditions. If Westinghouse's valuation reaches $30B, the US government's option for an 8% equity stake (per the 2025 strategic partnership terms) would be triggered. As of early September 2026 no public filing had followed the confidential submission (re-verified, no change since mid-August).

2026-2027

Westinghouse Electric Company

First fueled eVinci test at INL's DOME test bed

Begin the fueled eVinci test-reactor experiment (a 3 MWt scaled unit) at the National Reactor Innovation Center's DOME facility at Idaho National Laboratory - the first US microreactor test of its kind, de-risking the commercial eVinci design. Westinghouse cleared a precursor milestone on August 24, 2026, completing zero-power criticality testing with Los Alamos and Idaho National Laboratories at the NNSA's National Criticality Experiments Research Center in Nevada, validating the reactor's physics models and core design assumptions ahead of the fueled DOME run. The fueled test itself remained pending as of late August 2026, past DOE's earlier 'as early as spring 2026' framing; the most recent public guidance continued to target the opening run sometime this year.

2026

Westinghouse Electric Company

Deploy eVinci at Fort Drum under the Army's Janus Program

On August 26, 2026, Westinghouse Government Services was selected for the next phase of the US Army's Janus Program, a $2.2B, five-year initiative backed by the Department of War's Defense Innovation Unit to build and operate more than 20 commercial nuclear microreactors across military installations. Westinghouse's eVinci microreactor was matched to Fort Drum, New York as one of five initial sites awarded to five reactor developers; the selection follows eVinci's August 24, 2026 zero-power criticality milestone at the Nevada National Security Site.

2026-2027

Westinghouse Electric Company

Convert the US-Saudi nuclear pact into an AP1000 order

Following the July 23, 2026 US-Saudi peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement, the deal remains in diplomatic limbo: one day after the signing, President Trump conditioned approval on Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords to normalize relations with Israel, and Saudi Arabia has so far resisted signing, insisting on progress toward Palestinian statehood first. Congressional review was still pending as of late August 2026. A potential multi-decade, multi-billion-dollar Saudi AP1000 program with Westinghouse as likely builder cannot proceed until these preconditions are resolved. Re-verified September 2026, no change.

2026-2027

Westinghouse Electric Company

Pick the first plant site and start construction

Convert the April 7, 2026 completion of the Alabama/Ohio/Texas site evaluation tour into a final site choice and start construction of the initial ~50 MWe Da Vinci facility, contingent on the TMTG merger close (still targeted by end of 2026) and approvals. Re-verified September 6, 2026: no final site had been announced, and TAE's homepage still lists the April tour as the latest siting update.

2026

TAE Technologies

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Sep 10

Czech regulator clears Westinghouse fuel at Temelin

The Czech State Office for Nuclear Safety authorized CEZ on September 9, 2026 to use Westinghouse fuel at Temelin Nuclear Power Plant. CEZ plans to load the first assemblies into Unit 1 during a scheduled outage at the end of 2026, after years of testing and safety analyses. The fuel is already on site; CEZ is also preparing licensing for Westinghouse assemblies at Dukovany as it diversifies away from a single supplier.

Westinghouse Electric Company

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Sep 9

CATL raises 314Ah storage cell prices

Energy-Storage.News reported on September 9, 2026 that CATL raised list prices on its 314Ah storage cells from RMB 0.414 per Wh to RMB 0.423 per Wh. The move follows China's 2% lithium-ion consumption tax that took effect September 1, 2026, rising to 4% on September 1, 2027. EVE Energy and Lishen are also passing the tax through, with 314Ah cells tight and sector utilization above 90%.

CATL

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Sep 8

Slovenia clears Tesla FSD ahead of EU vote

Slovenia approved Tesla's FSD Supervised driver-assistance system for public roads, becoming the sixth European country to do so ahead of a potential EU-wide vote Tesla has said could come as soon as October 6, 2026. Tesla Europe wrote on X that rollout will begin soon, and the Slovenian Traffic Safety Agency confirmed the temporary type approval to Reuters. The Netherlands granted the first EU clearance in April; Lithuania, Estonia, Denmark and Belgium followed, while France has begun testing two FSD-equipped cars after earlier safety concerns.

Tesla

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Sep 8

TerraPower targets first UK Natrium power in 2034

TerraPower CEO Chris Levesque told Reuters on September 7, 2026 that Natrium reactors could begin generating electricity in Britain by 2034, making the UK the company's first market outside the United States. The sodium-cooled design, already under construction in Wyoming and in the UK Generic Design Assessment, produces 345 MW of baseload power and can boost to 500 MW for more than five hours using molten-salt storage. Levesque said power would cost under 100 pounds per megawatt hour; TerraPower has not chosen a UK site but said its British subsidiary is likely to be based in Liverpool.

TerraPower

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Sep 8

Holtec sets $15 to $18 range for Nasdaq IPO

Holtec Nuclear Corporation launched the roadshow for its Nasdaq IPO on September 8, 2026, offering 50 million Class A shares at $15 to $18 each to raise up to $900 million at a valuation of up to $10.2 billion, plus a 30-day option for 7.5 million more shares. The Camden, New Jersey company intends to list on Nasdaq and Nasdaq Texas under HNUC. J.P. Morgan, Guggenheim Securities, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and BofA Securities are joint lead book-runners.

Holtec International

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Sep 8

NIO opens 10 Yunnan highway battery-swap stations

NIO Power and Yunnan Transport Investment put 10 new highway battery-swap stations into operation on September 8, 2026 at state-run service areas on the G5621, G85, G78, G5 and G8511 corridors. NIO said it had 9,328 charging and swap sites in China as of that date, including 4,075 swap stations and 5,253 charging stations, and more than 800 jointly built stations with over 40 local state partners.

NIO

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