Liang Wenfeng provided timely help to Zeng Yuqun in his hour of need.
Liang Wenfeng made a move, handing a reassurance pill to the capital market on behalf of CATL.
On October 22, foreign media reported that DeepSeek's new round of financing reached about 1 trillion yuan, and CATL is one of the major investors. Earlier, according to media reports, the CATL ecosystem has invested about 5 billion yuan in DeepSeek's first round of financing, becoming the main external investor second only to Tencent.
On the surface, CATL's investment in DeepSeek benefits DeepSeek, but this news is actually timely help from DeepSeek to CATL, because it is CATL that is in urgent need of help right now. This is the most tense moment between CATL and the capital market, and it urgently needs a reason to reassure investors.
A few days ago, it just released its Q3 financial report that aroused market concerns: although the revenue of 165.2 billion yuan hit a record high, the net profit attributable to shareholders only increased by 14.5% year on year. In comparison, the growth rate was 48.5% in the first quarter and 36.5% in the second quarter.
On the first trading day after the release of the Q3 report, its A-share price fell by 12.03%, and the stock price retreated by about half from the intraday high on May 7. What investors care about is what else CATL can rely on to achieve continued growth.
AI is exactly the story favored by the capital market, and DeepSeek is the hottest focus. DeepSeek's shareholder list is one of the hardest access lists in China's primary market at present.
Therefore, being able to invest in DeepSeek is not only because CATL is generous, but also because DeepSeek is generous to CATL. Liang Wenfeng is helping Zeng Yuqun stabilize investors.
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In fact, the capital market has always held a complex attitude towards CATL.
It used to be the real "Ning Wang", becoming the first company on the ChiNext board with a market value exceeding 1 trillion yuan in 2021; in May last year, it completed its secondary listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, raising HKD 41 billion (including over-allotment), which set the largest IPO scale of the year at that time.
However, its strong bargaining power also made it face dissatisfaction from customers, and the discussion of "de-CATL-ization" has never stopped.
In this financial report, CATL was labeled as "revenue growth without profit growth", and the market began to re-examine its profitability, even though this is the quarter with the best revenue performance, and even though it made a net profit of 230 million yuan per day on average in the third quarter.
It seems that there is only one step away between "Ning Wang" and an overvalued old stock that loses growth momentum.
At the performance communication meeting, the first question from investors was to ask about the reason for the change in unit profitability.
The management gave three explanations: changes in product structure, adjustments to consumption tax and export tax rebates. Energy storage batteries accounted for about a quarter of total sales in the third quarter; a number of long-term energy storage agreements locked at low prices in earlier years were delivered intensively in the third quarter, which diluted profits.
It is more intuitive to observe from another dimension. Roughly calculated by dividing the group's net profit attributable to shareholders by battery sales, the net profit per kWh of battery in the third quarter was about 82 yuan, compared with more than 100 yuan in the same period last year, a decrease of about 20%.
When JPMorgan Chase downgraded its H-share rating, it expressed concerns about the deterioration of industry profitability and the redistribution of industrial chain profits.
CATL now needs to stabilize market confidence, and it is at this point that the value of investing in DeepSeek emerges.
After becoming a hit in 2025, DeepSeek has become the target that investment institutions are scrambling to contact, and it did not start external financing for the first time until this year. Those who want to invest include both industrial capital and state-owned institutional investors. CATL, however, has appeared in the investor list of two consecutive rounds of financing for the share that cannot be obtained even with sufficient funds.
According to reports, during DeepSeek's first round of financing, an investor with an investment intention of 3 billion yuan contacted a senior executive of High-Flyer through personal connections, but only got an email address for submitting materials and failed to enter this round of financing. Multiple investors who were in contact with the transaction said that the first round of investors were mainly selected by Liang Wenfeng, and non-invited parties could hardly establish effective connections.
For the capital market, "being selected by DeepSeek" itself is a kind of endorsement. It shows that in the eyes of one of the most demanding AI companies, CATL is a recognized investor, which gives a fulcrum for CATL's AI story.
Lenovo has just demonstrated an example of a manufacturing company turning the tide with AI narrative.
It has been labeled as an "assembly plant" for many years, with its market value remaining sluggish for a long time and its price-earnings ratio only about 10 times. But it insisted on telling the AI story, and finally obtained new orders brought by AI demand, making the market re-estimate its growth space. In the first quarter of fiscal year 2026/27, Lenovo's AI-related revenue increased by 60% year on year, accounting for 35% of total revenue.
At the beginning of this year, its market value was hovering around 110 billion HKD, and by September 18, its market value peaked at 460 billion HKD, an increase of about 4 times, once exceeding that of Meituan. A PC company was revalued as a "leading AI infrastructure enterprise" overnight.
What CATL needs is exactly such a narrative fulcrum.
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Regarding the AI layout, CATL is cautious in words, but its actions are not small.
What it is following is still its familiar way — "acquire and invest". But taking shares in a company and actually operating the business are two different things. At present, CATL still maintains a "retreatable and advanceable" attitude towards the AI sector.
According to reports, the CATL ecosystem invested about 5 billion yuan in DeepSeek in the first round; related capital parties acquired about 38.1% of the shares of 21Vianet with about 6.4 billion yuan; CATL also plans to acquire 49% equity of the controlling shareholder of Zhongheng Electric with about 4.1 billion yuan (including cash and equity consideration). The total disclosed or reported scale of the three transactions of the listed company and its related entities exceeds 150 billion yuan. In addition, CATL also led the investment in embodied intelligent enterprise Galaxy Universal and nuclear fusion enterprise Beta Fusion.
Zhongheng Electric is engaged in computer room power supply business, with customers including Alibaba, Tencent and telecom operators. In 2025, its market share in the domestic high-voltage DC power supply market for intelligent computing centers was about 31%, ranking first.
The intention of this investment is not difficult to understand, that is, to let CATL's energy storage products enter the computer room together with Zhongheng's power supply equipment. But it remains to be observed whether Zhongheng's existing customers will become CATL's buyers as a result.
There is also an equipment upgrading opportunity hidden here. Nvidia, together with Google, Microsoft and other companies, released the 800V DC power supply specification through OCP, supporting higher power supply demand by increasing voltage and reducing conversion links. Although Zhongheng has already laid out 800V products, it still stated at the August performance meeting that relevant products are in the stage of industrialization promotion. Keeping up with the technical route is only the starting point to participate in the competition.
The significance of investing in 21Vianet should be viewed from the perspective of computer room builders. By the end of June, its operational wholesale IDC capacity reached 1007MW. The two sides proposed to cooperate in building a "gigawatt-level computing and power plant". The attraction for CATL is that it has the opportunity to participate in discussion and verification during the computer room planning stage, such as how much energy storage to configure, how to cooperate with power supply equipment, and how to reduce operating costs.
On the other hand, the computer room business itself also needs to absorb the expansion cost. 21Vianet's revenue in the second quarter increased by 14.2% year on year, but its gross profit decreased by 7.8%. The company explained that the main reason is that rapid expansion increased depreciation.
But at least, CATL now has a tellable AI story.
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If CATL really wants to do practical things in the AI track, the core element that connects the entire layout is "electricity".
Electric power and computer rooms that can access power are becoming the key bottleneck for the expansion of some AI projects. Microsoft CEO Nadella once said that the company has GPUs that have not been installed yet, and what is missing is power and computer rooms that can be put into use in time. In the PJM power grid with dense data centers in the United States, the capacity clearing price of main areas has increased by more than 11 times from the 2024/25 delivery year to the 2026/27 delivery year; Vertiv, which provides power supply and heat dissipation equipment for computer rooms, has seen its market value increase by about 12 times in three years.
The situation in China is slightly different. Four government departments previously proposed that by the end of 2025, the proportion of green power in newly built data centers at national hub nodes should exceed 80%; the "green power direct connection" policy requires overall planning of construction schemes for power sources, loads, lines and other facilities. Wind and solar power generation depends on the weather, and computer rooms cannot start and stop according to the weather, so energy storage has its place to play a role.
Elon Musk has already set a good example for this path.
Elon Musk publicly predicted in 2024 that after the chip shortage, the next shortage will be transformers, and then power. Tesla prefabricates energy storage equipment in factories with Megapack, and then packages medium-voltage power distribution with Megablock, equipped with software and long-term services to reduce on-site engineering work.
In 2025, Tesla's automotive revenue declined for the second consecutive year, with a decrease of 10%, but its energy business (power generation and energy storage) grew by 27% with a gross profit margin close to 30%; some media counted based on satellite images that about 720 Megapack units can be seen at the site of xAI's supercomputing center. Unable to wait for the power grid, xAI simply acquired mobile power generation service provider APR Energy to generate power by itself. According to media reports, the transaction scale is about 1 billion US dollars.
CATL also has the capacity of large-scale manufacturing and energy product delivery. At the Summer Davos Forum in June this year, Zeng Yuqun proposed that the production capacity target of sodium-ion batteries will exceed 100GWh in the next 3-5 years, and talked about its application prospects in AI data centers.
SenseTime Lingang Intelligent Computing Center is a ready-made example. CATL participated in the construction of a 35.776MWh energy storage system, but the platform that connects computing power scheduling, electricity price prediction and energy storage optimization is self-developed by SenseTime.
Whether considerable profits can be generated from AI remains to be verified. At least investing in DeepSeek gives CATL an opportunity to tell a new story.
For CATL at the current stage, sometimes creating a new narrative can restore market confidence far better than share repurchase.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Alphabet List" (ID: wujicaijing), the author is Si Bo, and 36Kr is released with authorization.