Battery Business

Written By Battery Burn Book

Battery stocks are a terrible way to understand batteries.

They’re also a very good way to see where the hype is going, where the fear is setting in, and which part of the industry the market has decided to misunderstand this week.

Every Wednesday, I’m tracking 8 public names that together give a decent read on the battery ecosystem: who supplies it, who’s trying to improve it, and who’s trying to make money deploying it. The point is not to pretend the stock market understands battery technology. The point is to watch what it rewards anyway.

This page tells you who’s on the list and why.

Materials & Recycling

Every battery cell depends on lithium, and that lithium either comes out of the ground or out of a dead battery. These two companies are the cleanest US-listed plays on each end of that loop: Albemarle on primary supply, ABAT on recycling.

ALB: Albemarle

One-liner: The biggest name in lithium. Founded / HQ: 1887 (modern form 1994). Charlotte, NC. Went public: NYSE, 1994 (spun out of Ethyl Corporation).

Albemarle is the largest US-listed lithium producer and one of the top three globally. It mines and refines lithium: mostly lithium hydroxide and lithium carbonate, the forms used in EV batteries, at operations in Nevada (Silver Peak, still the only active US lithium mine and recently approved for expansion), Chile (Salar de Atacama), and Australia (Greenbushes, through Talison Lithium, a JV with Tianqi Lithium and IGO). The stock trades largely on lithium prices, which have been volatile as Chinese oversupply collided with weaker-than-expected EV demand. Albemarle has been cutting aggressively on the Western refining side: idling its Kemerton hydroxide plant in Western Australia in February 2026 after a $1.3B impairment the year prior. On the US side, the direction has reversed: its Kings Mountain, NC lithium project cleared FAST-41 federal permitting in March 2026, with the Department of Energy as lead agency. This is the 12th mining-related project and the first North Carolina project to clear FAST-41, a 2015 statutory program that the Trump administration has prioritized for critical-minerals projects. Of the names on this list, ALB is the one closest to a pure lithium-price proxy.

ABAT: American Battery Technology Company

One-liner: US battery recycling. Founded / HQ: incorporated 2011 as Oroplata Resources; pivoted to battery materials in 2019 (renamed American Battery Metals Corporation), then renamed American Battery Technology Company in August 2021. Reno, NV. Went public: traded as ABML (under both the ABMC and, from August 2021, ABTC names); uplisted to NASDAQ as ABAT on September 21, 2023 (after a 1-for-15 reverse split).

ABTC runs two parallel businesses: a lithium-ion battery recycling facility  at the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center in McCarran, NV (20,000 MT/year design capacity, demonstrated >115% of design rate), and a planned primary lithium operation turning Nevada claystone into battery-grade lithium hydroxide near Tonopah, originally backed by a $57.7M DOE grant that DOE terminated on October 15, 2025, leaving a ~$52M funding gap, though the upstream resource remains a FAST-41 Transparency Priority Project. 

CEO Ryan Melsert was a founding engineer on Tesla's Gigafactory 1 before leading upstream-materials R&D at Tesla. With Li-Cycle's August 2025 bankruptcy sale to Glencore, ABTC became one of the few pure-play US battery recyclers still publicly traded: a position reinforced when the EPA selected it in November 2025 to recycle ~100,000 damaged modules from the Moss Landing BESS fire, a ~$30M project.

In the quarter ending Dec 31, 2025 revenue grew more than 1,300% YoY (more than the prior four quarters combined) and the company ended calendar 2025 with no debt. It remains small cap and speculative and the stock moves sharply on contract wins, grant updates, and equity raises.

Battery Tech & Cells

These companies are trying to build a better cell: higher energy density, faster charging, safer, or cheaper. Most are pre-revenue or early-commercial, so the stocks trade on technology milestones and OEM partnerships more than near-term earnings. Is it weird to have a publicly traded company without a commercial product? Apparently not in the battery industry.

QS: QuantumScape

One-liner: The solid-state flagship. Founded / HQ: 2010 (Stanford spinout). San Jose, CA. Went public: SPAC with Kensington Capital Acquisition, November 2020: originally NYSE, transferred to Nasdaq December 23, 2025.

QuantumScape is developing lithium-metal, anode-free cells using a proprietary ceramic solid electrolyte; a design that, at scale, promises meaningfully higher energy density, faster charging, and better safety than today's lithium-ion cells. Volkswagen has been a major investor and development partner for over a decade. In July 2024, the two signed a licensing deal giving VW's battery subsidiary PowerCo the non-exclusive rights to industrialize QS cells: up to 40 GWh/year, expandable to 80 GWh, with an additional 5 GWh option added in mid-2025. QuantumScape began shipping B1 samples in late 2025, signed a second OEM JDA, and ran a live Ducati V21L motorcycle demo at IAA Munich in September 2025: the first public demo of an anode-free solid-state cell in a vehicle. The company remains pre-revenue. A typical QS earnings call still reads more like an engineering update than a financial report.

ENVX: Enovix

One-liner: Silicon anodes, now shipping and now with a named customer. Founded / HQ: 2007. Fremont, CA. Went public: SPAC with Rodgers Silicon Valley Acquisition, July 2021 (NASDAQ).

Enovix makes lithium-ion cells with a 100% active silicon anode in a proprietary 3D architecture: a design the company says delivers meaningfully higher energy density than standard graphite-anode cells. Its initial commercial market is consumer electronics (smartphones, laptops, AR/VR devices, wearables), where a denser cell translates directly into longer battery life in the same form factor. Enovix's second-generation factory, Fab2, had its grand opening in Penang, Malaysia on August 8, 2024: a USD $1.2B high-volume manufacturing facility built to house up to four production lines. Wow business updates are kind of boring, tell me more about the chemistry…

SLDP: Solid Power

One-liner: Sulfide-electrolyte solid-state. Founded / HQ: 2011 (University of Colorado spinout). Louisville, CO (cells) and Thornton, CO (electrolyte). Went public: SPAC with Decarbonization Plus Acquisition III, December 2021 (NASDAQ).

Solid Power is developing sulfide-based solid-state batteries. The company has two parallel revenue paths: it licenses its cell technology and produces pilot-scale A- and B-sample cells at its Louisville, Colorado facility (SP1), and it sells its sulfide solid electrolyte material to partners and researchers from Thornton (SP2). BMW remains the anchor automotive partner, with Solid Power's cells installed in a BMW i7 road-test vehicle in May 2025: a milestone CEO John Van Scoter characterized as "key B-sample phase." Ford's role has diminished materially: its JDA was extended only through December 2025 and Ford is absent from the more important Joint Evaluation Agreement with Samsung SDI and BMW signed October 2025, which is now the centerpiece. A DOE grant of up to $50M (September 2024) is funding a continuous electrolyte line at Thornton, scaling capacity from 30 to 75 metric tons/year by 2026 and 140 by 2028. The stock moves on partnership and sample-delivery milestones. Alyssa used to own this stock and she was offended by it moving based on seemingly random chance so she dropped it at a loss for her mental health: sulfide-based solid-state batteries had already taken too much from her when she studied them for her doctoral thesis.

SES: SES AI

One-liner: A battery company that is following the AI hype. Founded / HQ: 2012 (MIT spinout, originally SolidEnergy Systems). Woburn, MA. Went public: SPAC with Ivanhoe Capital Acquisition, February 2022 (NYSE).

SES was originally developing lithium-metal hybrid battery cells for EVs: pairing a lithium-metal anode with a liquid electrolyte. That's no longer the business. In a March 2026 MIT Technology Review feature, CEO Qichao Hu said flatly that it's "just not possible for a Western company to build a sustainable business" in EV batteries. The GM JDA concluded in September 2024; the Honda agreement was converted to a services arrangement; both Honda and Hyundai JDAs expired in December 2025 without public renewal. 

In its own framing (Q4 2025 shareholder letter), SES now operates three revenue-generating business units plus an AI platform:

Underpinning all three is Molecular Universe (MU), an AI materials-discovery platform (MU-1.0 launched October 2025 with NVIDIA and GPT-5 integration). Management treats MU revenue as a small 2026 contributor and argues its real value is platform IP and the competitive edge it gives the three product lines.

For advanced materials, a JV with Hisun was announced in fall 2025 to commercialize MU-discovered electrolytes at Hisun's 150,000-ton annual scale. Six breakthroughs are currently being tested by 40+ customers.

A $30M buyback was announced in April 2025. The SES AI name is now accurate in a way it wasn't when the rebrand happened: the AI business is the business.

EVs, Storage, Charging

Here's where batteries actually go to work. One of these names is a mass-market giant (Tesla). The rest are pure-play deployment companies whose stocks tend to rise and fall with EV adoption, infrastructure spending, and grid build-out timing.

TSLA: Tesla

One-liner: The EV-and-battery-and-AI giant. Founded / HQ: 2003. Austin, TX (moved from Palo Alto in 2021; reincorporated in Texas mid-2024). Went public: Traditional IPO on NASDAQ, June 29, 2010.

Tesla makes EVs, stationary battery storage (Megapack for grid-scale, Powerwall for homes), solar, and is developing humanoid robotics (Optimus) and autonomous driving software. The product lineup keeps evolving: in Q4 2025 Tesla rolled out new standard and performance Model Y variants, and Tesla Semi and Cybercab are both targeted to begin production in 1H 2026, with the next-generation Roadster still in design development. Optimus Gen 3 is being readied for mass production, with the first production line being installed in California and start of production planned before the end of 2026. Megapack has become a material profit center: FY2025 energy revenue ~$12.77B (+27%) with 46.7 GWh deployed (+49%), with Shanghai Megafactory already in production (40 GWh) and Megafactory Houston slated to begin Megapack 3 and Megablock production in 2026. The lithium refinery has commenced pilot production and is in early ramp. By market cap, TSLA dwarfs every other name on this list combined.

FLNC: Fluence Energy

One-liner: Grid-scale storage integrator. Founded / HQ: 2018 (joint venture of Siemens and AES). Arlington, VA. Went public: Traditional IPO on NASDAQ, Fall 2021.

Fluence designs and deploys utility-scale battery storage systems: the huge battery arrays that sit next to power plants and help grids balance supply and demand. The current product lineup is Smartstack (the flagship launched February 2025), Gridstack, Gridstack Pro, Edgestack, Sunstack, and Ultrastack, paired with Fluence IQ software: Mosaic for market bidding and Nispera for asset performance management. By gigawatt-hours deployed, Fluence is one of the largest battery storage integrators in the world.

2025 was brutal. We won’t relive it. Q1 FY2026 looked like a different company. Backlog (future revenue already under contract) hit a record $5.5 billion, liquidity climbed to roughly $1.1 billion, and revenue jumped about 154% year over year. Still operating at a loss, but on a wildly different trajectory than in the spring. The real drama is upstairs, not inside the business. Fluence is not being sold, but AES, one of its founding parents, is changing hands. And because Fluence still has a supervoting control structure, that ownership shift matters more than it would at a normal public company.

What I’ll Track Each Week

Each week, we’ll track three things: where these stocks closed on Tuesday, how they moved over the last week, and how they’ve performed year to date.

Think of it as a battery-sector pulse check, not a stock-picking exercise. We’re using the market as a signal, not as a substitute for understanding the underlying technology, manufacturing risk, or execution reality.

Not investment advice. Obviously. Just the names worth watching if you care where battery money and attention are going.

Battery Burn Book
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