CATL‘s move into nuclear fusion has aligned the world’s largest battery maker with one of its closest EV partners, Nio, which placed its own bet on the technology three years ago.
The battery giant led a seed round worth several hundred million yuan in the startup Beta Fusion, STAR Market Daily reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
The deal is CATL‘s first investment in controlled nuclear fusion, and the size of the round and the battery giant’s resulting stake were not disclosed.
CATL and Nio have spent the past two years turning a supplier relationship into something closer to an alliance.
The battery maker is Nio‘s primary cell supplier and agreed in March 2025 to invest up to 2.5 billion yuan in Nio Power, the EV maker’s charging and battery-swap unit.
The two later signed a five-year strategic agreement covering longer-life battery systems and formed a battery-asset joint venture in Wuhan.
In December, the two chairmen — Nio‘s William Li and CATL‘s Robin Zeng — met Hefei officials to discuss expanding cooperation in new-energy vehicles.
Li pushed back last year on a report that CATL was seeking a controlling stake in Nio Power, while publicly welcoming the battery maker’s investment in swap technology as a “positive sign” for the segment.
Both companies’ parallel fusion bets push that alignment upstream, toward the electricity their businesses ultimately rely on.
Nio’s Wider Fusion Portfolio
Nio reached the sector first, in 2023, and through more than one channel.
The carmaker invested 995 million yuan in fusion startup Neo Fusion for a 19.9% stake, while its affiliated fund, Nio Capital, took a further 10.1%, giving the two a combined holding of about 30%.
Nio Capital — which was co-founded by William Li — has gone further, co-investing alongside game developer miHoYo in other fusion ventures, including Energy Singularity.
Nio builds its vehicles in Hefei, the Anhui provincial capital that hosts the EAST tokamak — the country’s flagship “artificial sun” — and a fast-growing cluster of fusion research, giving locally tied firms an edge in talent and partnerships.
An Anhui Cluster Takes Shape
That cluster is drawing in carmakers beyond Nio.
Fellow Anhui manufacturer Chery announced its own self-developed fusion program in March, folding it into a long-term research plan and pitching it as a way to extend from vehicle assembly toward the energy source itself.
For automakers and battery makers alike, the logic is the same: control the cost of power, and the economics of electric mobility and energy storage shift in your favor.
CATL‘s founder Robin Zeng said in 2024 that the company aims to remake itself as a green-energy provider, projecting that developing and managing zero-carbon grids could be ten times larger than supplying EV batteries.
A National Priority and a Crowded Race
Fusion now carries official backing, having been written into China’s 15th Five-Year Plan as a direction for next-generation clean energy.
Private capital has rushed in ahead of any commercial payoff. Public funding for private Chinese fusion ventures has passed 20 billion yuan, by one tally cited in the reporting.
Nova Fusion raised 1.2 billion yuan across two rounds within a year of its founding, while StarRing Fusion has raised more than 2 billion yuan and crossed a $1 billion valuation.
Backers now span Alibaba, Ant Group and Meituan’s venture arm at home, and Google, Nvidia and a fund tied to Bill Gates abroad.
US company Helion Energy has agreed to supply Microsoft with power from a 50-megawatt plant targeted for 2028, and is regarded as among the fastest and cheapest paths to commercial fusion.
