Despite leading the race, the gambling-minded Zeng Yuqun remains busy at the table.

The "Battery King" has finally surpassed the "Liquor King"!

On September 25, Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited's A-shares rose more than 4% intraday, with its total market capitalization reaching 1.82 trillion yuan, surpassing Kweichow Moutai's market value of approximately 1.8 trillion yuan.

Even though its stock price pulled back on the second trading day, discussions about its performance in overseas and energy storage markets remained the focus of investors on platforms like Xueqiu. "With rising energy storage expectations, CATL excels in both revenue and net profit, maintains its global No. 1 market position, and overseas markets offer more imagination space. A record-high market value is normal," said one investor.

According to SNE Research data, in the first five months of 2025, CATL's global market share for power battery usage was 38.1%, up 0.6% year-over-year. In the energy storage sector, according to Xinluo Information data, its production volume ranked first globally in the first half of 2025.

In the first half of 2025, CATL achieved revenue of 178.886 billion yuan, up 7.27% year-over-year, and net profit attributable to shareholders of 30.485 billion yuan, up 33.33% year-over-year.

Although CATL has maintained its global No. 1 position in the power battery track for eight consecutive years, founder, chairman and CEO Zeng Yuqun remains busy across major battlefields at home and abroad, even more "serious" than in previous years.

In early September, he was present throughout the Munich Auto Show. The day before the opening, CATL specifically launched battery products for the European market. He personally introduced the products in detail to executives from European automakers including Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Volvo, and Renault, contrasting with his usual brief appearances at press conferences before rushing between various exhibition stands.

A week earlier, he appeared at the opening ceremony of the "2025 World Energy Storage Conference." According to him, CATL is promoting cross-disciplinary and cross-field technology integration, having deeply deployed in cutting-edge fields such as artificial intelligence, grid-forming energy storage, and virtual power plants.

After his speech, CATL's stock price showed significant upward momentum, with multiple trading days showing gains.

This year, the energy storage market has "exploded," with new installed capacity in the first half growing more than 60% year-over-year. Multiple securities firms have raised their full-year installed capacity expectations, and several market reports show a clear trend of orders concentrating toward leading companies.

CATL is the biggest beneficiary and the most "aggressive" player. Some securities firms predict its planned battery production capacity next year may reach 1,000 GWh, approximately 43% higher than 2025, exceeding market expectations. Based on the global lithium battery shipment volume projected for 2025, its production capacity planning next year could cover 50% of demand.

CATL sources told reporters that there are no major adjustments to the overall strategy this year, continuing previous business directions and continuing to exert force in energy storage, overseas and other markets.

In May this year, CATL listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, raising approximately 41 billion Hong Kong dollars, which was called the largest IPO fundraising globally this year at the time. Zeng Yuqun made no secret of his ambitions: "The Hong Kong stock listing means the company is more broadly integrated into global capital markets and is also a new starting point for the company to promote the global zero-carbon economy."

From "single-core" to "dual-core" and even "multi-core" business, from single market to global markets, CATL is fighting on multiple fronts. This is the most "crazy" phase since the company's establishment.

Born in Fujian, Zeng Yuqun is a good "gambler" who likes to make risky choices, such as quitting his stable job to enter the battery industry monopolized by foreign companies, spinning off the power battery team to establish CATL, and choosing to go overseas despite unassessable risks.

Wang Xing, founder of Meituan and also from Fujian, once mentioned a detail: Zeng Yuqun's office has a calligraphy work hanging that reads "Strong Gambling Nature." When asked why he doesn't hang "You Win Only If You Fight," his answer was: "Just fighting is not enough, that's physical work. Gambling is brain work."

Energy Storage Push

As early as when CATL was established in 2011, Zeng Yuqun formulated a dual-drive strategy of power batteries and energy storage batteries. But at that time, the latter was still in its infancy, and many people inside and outside the industry were skeptical about its feasibility and development potential, even considering it "gambling."

This led to CATL's power battery business far outpacing energy storage for a long time, despite early deployment. Especially during the initial explosion of lithium batteries, market attention was focused only on the power battery business.

Zeng Yuqun indeed focused his efforts here. Just in the second year of establishment, he secured a major power battery order for BMW's first pure electric vehicle, becoming its only battery supplier in Greater China. CATL's client list subsequently added companies like BAIC, Geely, Dongfeng, and Changan.

In 2017, CATL surpassed Japan's Panasonic and BYD, reaching the top of the power battery track with a 17% global market share. This made the concurrent energy storage business seem even more "obscure." Power batteries remain CATL's revenue mainstay, with the 2025 interim report showing a revenue proportion of 73.55%.

But CATL's energy storage business wasn't a complete "blank slate." In its first year of establishment, it participated in the world's largest "wind-solar-storage-transmission" demonstration project - the Zhangbei energy storage project.

Engineering graduate Zeng Yuqun deeply understood the importance of core technology. CATL firmly grasped the core component of energy storage systems - battery cells, which account for about 50%-60% of total costs.

When the energy storage boom arrived, even though the market saw new players like Hi-Tech Battery, Ruipu Lanjun and others emerge, CATL could still maintain pricing power. After 2021, multiple provinces and autonomous regions issued policies "mandating" new energy projects to configure energy storage at certain ratios, driving an order surge with many companies experiencing explosive order growth.

CATL leveraged its momentum as the "power battery leader," with brand and scale on a completely different level from competitors. Energy storage business began to scale up. The mainstream 280Ah cell specification in the industry's first phase was the standard that CATL introduced in 2020.

At that stage, Zeng Yuqun began "managing both hands." Energy storage business revenue jumped from merely about 2 billion yuan in 2020, representing 3.86% of total revenue, to 13.6 billion yuan the following year, accounting for about 10% of revenue.

Zeng Yuqun directly replicated the power battery playbook in the energy storage market. He likes to increase product premiums through R&D, for example, in power battery business, core selling points revolve around safety, space utilization, cost per kWh, and cycle investment returns. Since 2014, CATL has cumulatively invested over 80 billion yuan in R&D, with R&D investment reaching 18.6 billion yuan last year alone - a scale approaching the annual revenue of some mid-tier lithium battery companies.

According to a Morgan Stanley report, CATL's energy storage systems can bring customers approximately 14% internal rate of return premium in global markets, and about 8% premium even in China's intensely competitive market.

Within just a few years, CATL surpassed veteran companies like Japan's Panasonic and South Korea's LG Chem, which had been in the business for decades, occupying first place in both major markets. By 2024, CATL achieved eight consecutive years as global No. 1 in power battery usage and four consecutive years as global No. 1 in energy storage battery shipments.

But in recent years, energy storage has become a "brutal" battlefield. Accompanying cyclical fluctuations in the power battery industry, intense price competition and slowing demand growth have led multiple companies focused on power battery business to treat energy storage as their "second curve." Some photovoltaic companies have also eyed the "solar-storage integration" pie, making low prices the competition core.

In March this year, the energy storage market saw consecutive bidding prices of 0.486 yuan/Wh and 0.478 yuan/Wh, twice breaking the previous low of 0.499 yuan/Wh set in January. A year ago, regular prices were still above 0.8 yuan/Wh.

CATL also experienced its first revenue decline since listing in 2024, with full-year profit growth without revenue growth, including a 4.36% decline in energy storage business revenue.

Zeng Yuqun's most frequently discussed topic recently has become "involution." He mentioned that over three years, energy storage prices dropped about 80%, seriously deviating from costs, with price wars even spreading overseas.

He stated bluntly: "Technology homogenization issues are emerging. Driven by capital, many companies choose shortcuts, tending toward copying and replication rather than independent R&D. Innovation requires burning money, but if everyone wants shortcuts, who will innovate?"

Betting on Overseas Markets

This has made overseas market strategic weight even higher.

90% of funds raised from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange listing will be invested in Phase I and Phase II construction of the Hungary factory. CATL also admitted that the Hong Kong IPO was launched due to foreign exchange reserves being unable to cover overseas investment needs.

Zeng Yuqun is not unfamiliar with overseas markets and has tasted success, as CATL's first major customer when it was established was BMW. ATL, the company he founded earlier, was also a core lithium battery supplier to Apple.

He has his own obsession with global markets. In 2014, when CATL established its first overseas subsidiary in Germany, going overseas to build companies wasn't a mainstream choice in the battery industry, although China's new energy vehicle market was already showing rapid development. In subsequent years, backed by BMW orders, CATL successively opened branches in Hungary, the United States and other locations, and began building factories in parts of Europe.

This slightly gambling-natured bet yielded decent results for Zeng Yuqun.

In 2019, when domestic new energy vehicle subsidies tightened and sales declined accordingly, putting numerous power battery companies in difficult situations, Zeng Yuqun had already opened international markets and signed a two-year supply agreement with Tesla the following year.

According to media reports, in 2021 alone, Tesla pre-ordered 45 GWh of lithium iron phosphate batteries from CATL for the following year's sales plan, corresponding to battery usage for nearly 800,000 vehicles, already exceeding Tesla's total sales in the first three quarters of 2021.

In 2020, CATL's overseas revenue was 7.9 billion yuan, accounting for 15.71% of total revenue - a scale dozens of times larger than direct competitors like Gotion High-tech and Farasis Energy. That same year, Zeng Yuqun rose from second place to richest person on the Fujian rich list, and CATL began being called the "Battery King" by the industry.

Although a "good gambler," Zeng Yuqun wants "big results" and doesn't care much about temporary gains and losses. During those years, "crisis awareness" was repeatedly mentioned by him. In 2017, he sent a company-wide email titled "When Typhoons Come, Do Pigs Really Fly?" warning himself and employees: think hard, only then will there be a way forward in the future, winds will always stop someday.

CATL indeed fell into "crisis moments" at its peak. In 2022, then-GAC Group Chairman Zeng Qinghong joked, "Am I working for CATL?" In 2023, economist Ren Zeping published an article saying CATL was squeezing upstream and downstream profits, with "the world suffering under the Battery King for too long."

During the same period, numerous automakers including Changan, Great Wall, and Zeekr entered self-developed batteries, making "de-CATL-ization" an industry consensus for a time. Significant data changes appeared in the first half of 2023, when CATL's battery capacity utilization rate hit a two-year low of 60.5%, compared to 95% at its 2021 peak.

In 2023, Zeng Yuqun decisively adjusted direction - going overseas, not engaging in domestic "involution." According to media reports, by the end of that year, CATL employees' computer desktop backgrounds were uniformly set to "Whoever goes overseas is the company's hero, go out, go overseas."

In early 2024, he bluntly stated in a company-wide email: "An ambitious company usually goes through three stages - seeking survival, pursuing development, and going global." He clearly proposed that CATL's overseas business had entered a critical moment and must succeed no matter what.

He personally took charge of overseas business, with four co-presidents separately responsible for overseas sales, overseas infrastructure, overseas base operations, and overseas procurement, reporting directly to him.

Zeng Yuqun's ambitions are big, and his investments are substantial. The market has seen CATL invest heavily in overseas factory construction in recent years. According to media statistics, its European battery factory construction costs exceed 13 billion euros.

This process hasn't been easy. Initially, CATL mainly went overseas through products and technology. In 2021, it signed a technology licensing cooperation agreement with Hyundai Mobis, supporting Hyundai Mobis' related battery product supply in South Korea and globally, while also providing battery products to its sister company Hyundai Motor.

But in recent years, as new energy vehicle market subsidies increased, Europe became the main battlefield. Major European automotive companies accelerated electrification processes, with sales reaching 1 million units in the first half of this year alone, up 24% year-over-year. According to regulations, all new cars sold within EU territory must be electric vehicles by 2035.

Europe has not yet formed a complete lithium battery industrial chain, triggering intensive overseas expansion by domestic companies. But communications with multiple industry insiders revealed that selling batteries to European markets isn't easy, as local laws and regulations have clear restrictions on carbon dioxide emission reductions across all links including battery supply chains and logistics.

To fully capture dividends, Zeng Yuqun simply built factories overseas - CATL's first overseas factory in Thuringia, Germany, started operation in 2023; the battery factory in Debrecen, eastern Hungary, has planned capacity of 100 GWh; the Stellantis European battery factory is also expected to be located in Spain.

To capture overseas markets, he doesn't stick to one approach. For example, in the US market, to cater to local requirements, CATL cooperates with American automakers like Ford and General Motors through technology licensing models.

Zeng Yuqun said overseas market capacity planning can reference the football "4-3-3 formation." In his view, this football tactic emphasizing sharing and cooperation can also be applied to the new energy vehicle industry. Specifically, it means deploying 30% capacity each in resource-advantaged regions and market-advantaged regions, and 40% capacity in technology-advantaged regions.

In 2024, CATL's overseas revenue surged from 7.9 billion yuan four years ago to 110.3 billion yuan, with revenue proportion rising from 15.71% to 30.48%. In the first half of 2025, CATL's overseas business gross margin was 29.02%, exceeding the domestic gross margin level of 22.94%.

A Morgan Stanley report also mentioned that CATL's industry leadership position has not only not been weakened but has been further strengthened in competition. The report stated that CATL's most significant change occurred in the European electric vehicle battery market, where the company achieved "significant share growth," while other small battery manufacturers' market shares remained "sluggish."

Zeng Yuqun once admitted in a media interview: "We are already No. 1, but this No. 1 is 'virtual.' To be the real No. 1, it must be a No. 1 with both internal and external cultivation, which is not enough now. A 'solid No. 1' means reaching the realm where 'there's only CATL and others.'"

This also means he can only launch comprehensive warfare on larger battlefields, thereby starting what might be the most important "gamble" of his life.