From Samsung SDI’s SolidStack and its 2027 mass-production pledge, to Toyota’s 1,200km target, to the year-end-2026 mass-production announcement from a GAC-affiliated Chinese maker — checking the solid-state race across three axes: timeline, process, and price.
The card all three companies played together on their Q2 earnings calls was ESS for AI data centers. A look at the structure of this LFP-dominated market, the three makers’ strategies, and the market-share gap with China.
On August 12-13, 2026, news came out in quick succession that Solivis, a company specializing in sulfide solid electrolytes, had raised 23 billion won in a Series C, and that Cosmos Lab, an aqueous zinc-halogen battery company, had raised 22 billion won in a Series A.
Prompted by news of Cosmos Lab’s funding round for its non-lithium ESS battery, here’s a look at zinc-halogen aqueous battery chemistry and the patent landscape around it.
CATL has reconfirmed 2027 pilot production for all-solid-state batteries, while LFP’s cathode-material share has already expanded to 63.6%. The next-gen and current-gen races are running in parallel.
LFP took 64.3% of the awarded volume in Korea’s second ESS central-contract market. Winning the contracts is one thing; building out the material ecosystem behind them is another.
LG Energy Solution and Samsung SDI are competing for Hyundai’s Atlas humanoid robot battery contract, expected to be decided around year-end. The 21700 cylindrical format looks like the front-runner.
CATL clears a thermal-propagation test for a 350Wh/kg aviation cell, Factorial’s Solstice runs at 90°C with no cooling, and Verkor starts up its second French gigafactory line.
GL Research sees TOP Materials’ materials, electrode-foundry, and systems-engineering businesses growing together, but the more interesting story is its precursor-free cathode technology.
At InterBattery 2026, Korea’s three battery makers all widened their gaze to applications beyond EVs (AI data centers, robots, ESS), but the weapons they put forward differed.