Investing 10.5 billion yuan, Zeng Yuqun has set his sights on the leading company in AI computing power and plans to invest in DeepSeek.
According to a report by The Information last night, CATL, the global leader in the power battery market, is planning to participate in the first - round financing of DeepSeek. This is the latest move by CATL in the AI field.
Within the past one and a half months, CATL officially announced an investment of 10.5 billion yuan to strengthen its presence in the AI computing - power and electricity coordination track. The comprehensive layout of the entire industrial chain integrating power, computing power, energy storage, and AI has been fully implemented.
On May 13th, 21Vianet, the first Chinese IDC company listed on the US stock market, issued an announcement stating that an affiliated capital party of CATL will invest approximately US$942 million (equivalent to about 6.403 billion yuan) to acquire about 38.1% of the shares. On April 9th, CATL invested approximately 4.1 billion yuan in Zhongheng Electric, the leader in the HVDC market of intelligent computing centers, and acquired 49% of the equity of Zhongheng Electric's controlling shareholder.
This also means that CATL has achieved full coverage of the core tracks of computing power rooms, power, and energy storage.
These two significant investments quickly detonated the capital market, and the stock prices of CATL, 21Vianet, and Zhongheng Electric soared. On May 13th, 21Vianet's stock price soared by more than 30% during intraday trading. As of the close on May 22nd local time, its stock price was US$9.54 per share (equivalent to about 64.82 yuan), and its market value was US$2.716 billion (equivalent to about 18.455 billion yuan). On April 9th, Zhongheng Electric's stock price was 31.93 yuan per share, and it has since risen by 63.14% to 52.09 yuan per share, with a total market value of 29.356 billion yuan.
▲ Stock price changes of 21Vianet and Zhongheng Electric (Source: Tencent Stock Selector)
In fact, CATL's entry into the computing power field started its layout last year. In July and October last year, CATL's investment platform participated in the investment of Damao Technology, an energy large - model company, and jointly launched the AIDC Computing - Power and Electricity Coordination Platform with SenseTime to seize the market for intelligent dispatching of computing power and energy.
Since last September, CATL's stock price on the A - share market has risen by more than 60%. As of the close on May 22nd, its stock price was 411.16 yuan per share, and its total market value reached 1.9 trillion yuan.
▲ Changes in CATL's A - share stock price (Source: Tencent Stock Selector)
Computing - power and electricity coordination is becoming a new trend in the development of the AI industry.
During the Two Sessions in March this year, the government work report included computing - power and electricity coordination in the key projects of new infrastructure for the first time, on par with ultra - large - scale intelligent computing clusters.
In April, four departments jointly issued the "Action Plan for Promoting the Two - way Empowerment of Artificial Intelligence and Energy", setting a specific goal of "by 2030, the proportion of green electricity used in the national computing power hub nodes must reach more than 80%".
It can be seen that leveraging the trend of AI computing power, CATL is looking for a second growth curve and is comprehensively transforming from a battery giant to an energy infrastructure giant in the computing power era.
Its strategy was clear in November 2024. Zeng Yugun, the founder and chairman of CATL, mentioned in an interview with Reuters that CATL plans to build a large - scale independent energy system with sufficient power supply capacity to support super - large data centers and even entire cities.
With the investment of tens of billions of yuan, CATL's cross - border grand chess game has fully set sail.
Invest 640 million yuan
Enter the leading domestic IDC company
Investing 640 million yuan last week is CATL's latest move in the cross - border data center field.
On May 13th, 21Vianet announced that an affiliated capital party of CATL will acquire about 38.1% of its shares for approximately US$942 million (equivalent to about 6.403 billion yuan). This investment transaction is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2026.
The buyers are PJ Millennium I and PJ Millennium II, and the sellers are Success Flow and Choice Faitt under Shandong Hi - Speed Holding Group. The buyers will purchase a total of up to 650,424,419 Class A common shares of 21Vianet from the sellers (this proposed investment transaction), with a cash price of US$1.4486 per common share (equivalent to about 9.8522 yuan), and US$8.6914 per American Depositary Share (equivalent to about 59.1119 yuan).
The two buyer companies are wholly - owned subsidiaries of PJ Millennium Partnership. The general partner of this partnership, Lochpine BG I GP, is a non - controlling and non - consolidated affiliated entity of CATL. This means that this investment will not be reflected in CATL's financial statements, and the compliance pressure may be relatively small.
▲ Announcement of 21Vianet (Source: 21Vianet official website)
Founded in 1996, 21Vianet has a remarkable background. Its official website shows that it is the first Chinese IDC company listed on the US stock market and the only leading IDC enterprise in China that develops both "base - type" and "city - type" IDC businesses simultaneously. Currently, it operates more than 50 data centers in more than 30 cities across the country, with an operating capacity of 889MW for the base - type business, more than 49,000 operating cabinets for the city - type business, and a port capacity of over 4T.
21Vianet's data center business is a major power consumer, while CATL is engaged in the battery business.
In addition, 21Vianet has won several large orders. According to the data disclosed by Century IOT, the company successfully won five orders in the fourth quarter of 2025, with a total capacity of 135MW. In addition to the 32MW order disclosed in the previous quarter, its data center in the Yangtze River Delta won another 12MW order from an Internet customer, and several data centers in the Beijing - surrounding area won a total of 91MW of orders from cloud computing customers, intelligent driving customers, and Internet customers.
In April this year, on the occasion of its 30th anniversary, 21Vianet announced that its strategic focus will be on the integration of computing and electricity, including exploring the coordination methods of computing and electricity in different scenarios in the base - type and city - type layouts; improving resource scheduling capabilities in the coordination of computing particles, electricity particles, and intelligent particles; optimizing energy efficiency and improving system stability under the green DC path.
Invest 4.1 billion yuan a month ago
Bet on DC power supply for intelligent computing centers
In addition to the above large - scale investment, in April this year, CATL also invested approximately 4.1 billion yuan in Zhongheng Technology Investment, the controlling shareholder of Zhongheng Electric. Zhongheng Electric plays the role of the "power heart" of data centers.
On April 9th, Zhongheng Electric issued an announcement on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, stating that CATL plans to invest approximately 4.1 billion yuan in Zhongheng Technology Investment, the controlling shareholder of Zhongheng Electric.
Among them, CATL will contribute the 99.7% equity of its subsidiary Shidai Tianyuan, valued at nearly 1.2 billion yuan, and pay the rest in cash. After the proposed capital increase is completed, the registered capital of Zhongheng Technology Investment will be changed to 29.41 million yuan, and its shareholders Zhu Guoding, Bao Xiaoru, and CATL will hold 35.70%, 15.30%, and 49.00% of the equity respectively.
▲ Announcement of Zhongheng Electric (Source: Shenzhen Stock Exchange)
Founded in 1996, according to the data of domestic digital industry consulting firm Kezhi Consulting, in the HVDC market of China's intelligent computing centers in 2025, Zhongheng Electric ranked first with a market share of 31%.
The company's 800V DC power supply (800VDC) flagship product that has been launched is an effective solution to the current power supply bottleneck of data centers.
In May this year, NVIDIA clearly mentioned in its technical blog that in 2027, 800V HVDC data centers will be fully put into production in sync with NVIDIA Kyber rack - level systems. Currently, the demand for data centers is strong, and the power density of cabinets is constantly increasing. The power of a single cabinet has jumped from 36kW in 2022 to 200kW in 2025 and is expected to reach 600kW or even MW - level in 2027. This change is forcing the power supply architecture of intelligent computing centers to evolve towards DC 800V at an accelerated pace.
Zhongheng Electric's financial report shows that the company has won bids for the power supply systems of Alibaba's self - built computer rooms and multiple third - party jointly - built computer rooms, the elastic DC systems of Tencent's self - built computer rooms and multiple third - party jointly - built computer rooms, the precision power distribution products for ByteDance's self - built computer rooms and multiple third - party jointly - built computer rooms, and the HVDC power supply for the financial data center of the Bank of China.
▲ Alibaba's data center where Zhongheng Electric's solutions have been implemented (Source: Zhongheng Electric official website)
The revenue from its data center power supply accounts for the highest proportion in its business, reaching 36.3%, with an amount of 776 million yuan, a year - on - year increase of 16.1%.
Participate in the investment of the "AI brain" of intelligent computing centers
Join hands with SenseTime to build a benchmark case for AIDC computing - power and electricity coordination
Another earlier layout of CATL was in October last year, when Puquan Capital, its industrial investment platform, participated in the nearly 100 - million - yuan Series A+ financing of Damao Technology.
Founded in March 2021, Damao Technology focuses on using energy large models to help computing power infrastructure with prediction, dynamic decision - making, and real - time scheduling, which is the "intelligent brain" of intelligent computing centers, general computing centers, and super - computing centers. When this financing was announced in October 2025, Damao Technology said that it would use the funds for the independent R & D and commercial promotion of core technologies such as energy large models, computing - power and electricity coordination platforms, and related intelligent agents.
It is worth mentioning that three months before the announcement of this financing, in July last year, Damao Technology, together with SenseTime and Puquan Capital under CATL, launched the AIDC Computing - Power and Electricity Coordination Platform implemented in SenseTime's Lingang Intelligent Computing Center.
This platform integrates SenseTime's self - developed multi - modal large - scale base model, Damao Technology's energy large model, and CATL's energy storage technology. Through the integration capabilities of the heterogeneous computing power elastic scheduling platform and the dynamic flexible energy scheduling platform, combined with the full - volume data of SenseTime's intelligent operation and maintenance platform, it creates a full - chain intelligent scheduling system from "data - algorithm - strategy - execution - verification".
This platform has achieved an annual power saving of 3 million kWh. The accuracy of the model's energy demand prediction based on energy blocks has reached over 88%, and the decision - making accuracy has reached over 93%.
▲ Architecture diagram of the AIDC Computing - Power and Electricity Coordination Platform (Source: SenseTime WeChat official account)
Among them, Damao's self - developed Energy Operating System (EOS) integrates energy large models, AI Agents, and adaptive scheduling technologies to form an integrated ability of "prediction - scheduling - trading".
Damao Technology also received angel - round financing from SenseTime and Series A financing from Cambricon before, which means that it has achieved the coordination of chips, algorithms, and energy storage.
Conclusion: Behind the computing power war
Energy giants are seizing the opportunity of computing - power and electricity integration
CATL's layout in the AIDC energy field shows a clear systematicness. From the underlying energy storage cells and high - voltage DC power supply equipment, to the physical computing power room resources, and then to the top - level intelligent scheduling platform, it has connected the entire link from top to bottom, forming a closed - loop of energy storage and power transformation, power transmission, computing power bearing, and intelligent control.
Zeng Yugun also mentioned in an interview with Reuters that he believes that the market scale of the development and operation business of zero - carbon power grids (the standard configuration for the next - generation AI factories) may be ten times that of the electric vehicle power battery supply business. Therefore, in addition to CATL, other enterprises such as Sungrow and TBEA have also crossed over from the energy side to AIDC and computing - power and electricity integration.
This also confirms that the competition in AI computing power is closely related to the energy supply capacity. A number of energy enterprises have taken the opportunity to enter the computing power track