The Mid-game Battle in Energy Storage: CATL's Market Share Shrinks, while Hithium and Envision Advance

At the beginning of 2026, a set of global front-of-meter energy storage shipment data stirred up the entire industry. The market is galloping at a rate of over 80%, and the overall shipment volume has exceeded 500 GWh. However, CATL's market share has significantly dropped from 39% to 26%.

This change is far more than just a numbers game. CATL's shipment volume is still growing, but its growth rate has been diluted by the swarming competitors. Hichen Energy Storage has leaped from the fourth to the second place in the industry. Envision Energy is making steady progress. Coupled with Ganfeng Lithium Battery, which has strongly entered the market from the upstream, the pattern of the energy storage cell market is being reshaped at an unprecedented speed.

The involution in the domestic market has squeezed the profit margin to the limit, and global orders have become the key to determining future rankings. Hichen is building a factory in Texas. Envision is simultaneously deploying production capacity in Europe and North America. CATL is making heavy investments in Hungary and Spain. The whistle for the second half has already blown. The battlefield has extended from simple cell manufacturing to comprehensive competition in global production capacity layout, large cell technology iteration, and even AI scheduling capabilities.

01 Under CATL's Throne: The Stall of the Giant and the Loss of Market Share

It is a basic consensus in the industry that CATL still firmly holds the top position in the global energy storage cell market. In 2025, it delivered a front-of-meter energy storage shipment of over 130 GWh, a year-on-year increase of over 20%. However, on the other side of this report card is a nearly 13-percentage-point drop in its market share.

The leader's growth has failed to outpace the overall market, which means that the incremental dividends of the market are being divided up by a large number of competitors. In the past few years, CATL has built what seems to be a solid moat by deeply binding with leading integrators such as Tesla and Sungrow. However, this binding relationship is undergoing subtle changes after the industry's demand for overseas expansion erupted.

In order to win overseas projects, system integrators are starting to seek more diverse cell supplies to ensure delivery safety and cost advantages. The "one-to-one" close cooperation model with leading customers has gradually evolved into a "one-to-many" supply chain combination. This has opened a crucial time window for companies such as Hichen, Envision, and CALB.

They are no longer satisfied with sporadic orders in the domestic market but are directly targeting CATL's core customer base. For example, CALB has deeply bound with Sungrow and has become the main supplier of its PowerTitan 2.0 energy storage system. Envision Energy has won the favor of more overseas integrators with its global delivery capabilities.

For CATL, the shrinkage of its market share is a strong market signal. It means that relying solely on scale and existing customer relationships is no longer sufficient to maintain an absolute advantage. The core of industry competition is shifting from "production capacity scale" to "comprehensive delivery capabilities", especially in local manufacturing, technology adaptation, and financial service capabilities overseas.

02 The Dark Horse Sprint of Hichen and Envision

Hichen Energy Storage was the most eye-catching "dark horse" in the energy storage market in 2025. Its rise path is clear and rapid: focusing on the energy storage track, achieving extreme manufacturing, and rapidly ramping up production capacity. From Xiamen to Chongqing and then to Foshan, its production capacity has quickly reached the level of hundreds of GWh, providing a basic guarantee for undertaking large-scale global projects.

More importantly, Hichen's breakthrough is profitable. In the first half of 2025, the company achieved a net profit of 213 million yuan, successfully turning from loss to profit. Its overseas revenue reached 1.221 billion yuan, accounting for 17.6% of its total revenue. This set of data is more convincing than the change in rankings. It proves that the new forces can not only increase the volume but also make money.

Hichen's strategy is highly targeted. In the domestic market, it seizes market share through product cost-effectiveness and rapid delivery capabilities. Overseas, it has chosen the most radical localization strategy. Its energy storage system manufacturing factory in Texas, USA, started mass production in August 2025, making it the first Chinese energy storage enterprise to implement system production capacity in the United States. This move directly targets the high-value but trade-barrier-ridden US market.

Envision Energy's rise demonstrates another endowment - its global genes and software-hardware integration capabilities. As the only Chinese-funded enterprise currently deploying lithium iron phosphate energy storage cell production lines in Asia, Europe, and North America, its international layout started early and has a deep foundation.

In 2025, its first energy storage cell production line in North America was officially put into mass production, further enhancing its localization capabilities. In addition to hardware manufacturing, the AI energy storage solution developed by Envision Energy is highly recognized in Europe, where the power market is mature, providing strong system-side support and differentiated selling points for its cell products.

Whether it is Hichen's manufacturing efficiency or Envision's global layout and software capabilities, they have all found the sharp blade to penetrate CATL's moat. The essence of this offensive is the challenge of the differentiated competition path to the traditional scale advantage.

03 The Battle of Higher Dimensions! From the GWh Competition to Multi-Dimensional Strangling

In the second half of the energy storage industry, the competition dimensions have been comprehensively upgraded. The era of simply competing in cell shipment volume in GWh is passing. The future competition is a comprehensive contest of technology, globalization, and business models.

The focus of the technology competition has clearly shifted to large cells. The mass production window for cells above 500 Ah has already opened. Whoever can achieve stable mass production and delivery first will gain an advantage in system integration energy density and full-life cycle cost.

CATL was the first to deliver a 587 Ah energy storage-specific cell. Hichen's 587 Ah battery has also been mass-produced, and Envision Energy has announced that its globally first 700+ Ah cell will be delivered soon. Behind this "arms race" in cell capacity is the competition for the right to speak in the long-term energy storage market.

Globalization is no longer an option but a necessity for survival. In 2025, the total scale of overseas orders signed by Chinese energy storage enterprises was nearly 284.26 GWh, 3.49 times the newly installed overseas capacity in 2024. The main battlefield for going overseas has extended from Europe and Australia to emerging markets such as the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

However, the road to going overseas is full of thorns. The United States has imposed additional tariffs, and the European Union has implemented the "battery passport". The policy risks are high. There are huge differences in grid standards and market demands among different countries, posing severe challenges to technical solutions. More troublesome is that the fierce price war in the domestic market is spreading overseas.

This means that the future winners will not only be product exporters but also must be local operators. Whether it is CATL's super factory in Europe or Hichen's manufacturing base in the United States, the purpose is to get closer to the market, avoid risks, and improve response speed. The global network layout of the supply chain will become the core competitiveness in the next stage.

As 2026 arrives, the energy storage industry is still on a high-growth golden track. The rules of the game in the industry have been rewritten. The protagonist of the story is still powerful, but the script has changed from "domination by one" to "a scramble among heroes".

The reshuffle is still ongoing. Sunwoda is declining, and Ganfeng Lithium Battery has strongly entered the market with its upstream resource advantages. This indicates that the competition threshold has been raised from production capacity scale to an all-round competition in industrial chain collaboration, technology iteration speed, and global operation capabilities.

The breakthroughs of Hichen and Envision are just the prelude to the mid-game battle. They prove that there are still new paths to rise outside the huge ecosystem built by CATL. For all participants, perhaps the biggest challenge is not the opponents but how to find their irreplaceable foothold in this comprehensively upgraded competition.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Foresee Energy". The author is Foresee Energy. It is published by 36Kr with authorization.