Revolutionizing Battery Technology for EVs and Beyond

Quantumscape and SES AI are two of the most innovative companies revolutionizing battery technology in electric vehicles and beyond in 2025. Different companies are heading towards divergent visions, addressing the ultimate issues of energy density, charging speed, safety, and scalability, albeit with infinitely different approaches, company development, and market considerations.

QuantumScape has become one of the most popular in the solid-state battery race. By making such a huge gamble, the company hopes to achieve an all-solid-state design, resulting in lighter batteries that charge faster, last longer, and pose significantly fewer safety risks compared to existing lithium-ion batteries. And that is the holy grail with electric cars.

QuantumScape is a high-profile competitor in the solid-state battery industry, focusing solely on the development of fully solid-state lithium-metal batteries for use in electric vehicles (EVs). This technology replaces the inferior old liquid separator and polymer separator with a solid ceramic electrolyte separation membrane, according to QuantumScape, which is reportedly safer than other separation methods in flammable and thermal runaway situations. 

The most recent achievement of the company, the Cobra separator process, marks the first significant step towards scaling up production. Cobra is 25 times faster in heat treatment and requires significantly less physical space than its predecessor, allowing scalable gigafactory production lines with the potential to realize commercial viability of solid-state designs. 

CEO Siva Sivaram emphasizes that Cobra is the core of the transition from R&D to manufacturing preparedness, with field tests planned for 2026. 

It is also a proprietary design, which enables QuantumScape to construct anode-free cells, where pure lithium metal is formed during the initial charge cycle. This further improves energy density and allows for ultra-fast charging in just 15 minutes during prototype testing. 

QuantumScape’s solid-state batteries are built on three pillars: energy density, durability, and operational efficiency.

Feature	Description	Impact / Benefit
Energy Density	Targets 800 – 1,000 Wh/L, 50 – 100% improvement over current lithium-ion batteries	Extends range of a 350-mile EV to 400 – 500 miles; reduces range anxiety, rivals ICE vehicles
Cycle Life	>1,000 full cycles with >95% capacity retention	Equivalent to 300,000+ miles of driving; addresses EV battery degradation issues
Operating Efficiency	Effective operation at room temperature, no bulky cooling system needed	Simplifies battery thermal management; reduces system weight and complexity
Fast Charging	<15 minutes to charge from 10 – 80%	Solves a critical barrier for EV adoption with ultra-fast charging

On the financial side, QuantumScape is financially sound, with $797.5 million in cash on hand and a long runway between now and 2029, supported by up to $131 million in milestone-based funding from Volkswagen through its PowerCo division, in addition to a current $130 million licensing agreement. 

The company has also signed another joint development deal with an unnamed international automaker, which is an excellent indicator that the industry is not only interested in Volkswagen, but the agreement is also essential to achieving commercial scale and market penetration. 

Although pre-revenue, QuantumScape has been a compelling speculative stock due to its combination of technological capabilities, a consistent capital base, and a growing number of strategic alliances.

SES AI’s Hybrid AI-Driven Lithium-Metal Strategy

SES AI Corporation approaches the problem in an alternative, yet complementary direction by integrating lithium-metal battery chemistry with artificial intelligence-based material discovery and battery management. 

Whereas QuantumScape targets a fully solid-state battery, SES AI is a hybrid lithium-metal battery with AI software added, which can be deployed in applications far beyond EVs, such as energy storage systems (ESS), drones, robotics and other portable electronics. 

The Molecular Universe platform of SES AI utilizes AI to expedite the discovery and optimization of novel battery materials, reducing decades of research to just months. The company has recently announced the first commercial battery in the world utilizing an electrolyte material discovered through this AI platform. This technology targets high-value markets, including drones and robotics, which represent initial commercial validation. 

Another milestone achieved by SES AI in the ESS market was the acquisition of UZ Energy, thereby extending its geographic footprint to Europe, Australia, and Asia. SES AI Corporation (NYSE: SES), currently valued at $433 million with a stock price of $1.18, announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire energy storage systems provider UZ Energy for approximately $25.5 million, subject to earnout adjustments based on financial performance targets. It is a strategic combination of UZ’s hardware and marketing accessibility with SES AI’s AI-driven materials discovery to position itself to capture a future market of an estimated $300 billion, with continual materials improvement through real-world feedback loops.

SES AI, with respect to financials, reported first half of 2025 revenues of $9.3 million through contracts with automotive OEMs of AI-enhanced battery materials, and estimates of reaching $15-25 million by year-end. 

The firm concluded the second quarter of 2025 with a liquidity of 229 million and zero debt, which enabled the company to continue with R&D and possible mergers and acquisitions. In addition, SES AI has established a collaboration with two unnamed car manufacturers, estimated to be worth up to $10 million, which further confirms its AI-focused development of next-generation batteries. 

Even after showing encouraging growth in revenue collection and diversified use, SES AI continues to encounter challenges of execution and scaling that are intrinsic to the combination of an advanced AI with materials science innovation. 

Market Performance and Investment Outlook

QuantumScape spent $8.3 million on capital expenditures in Q2 2025. Most of this spending supported equipment and facility upgrades for QSE-5B pilot production using the Cobra separator process. 

The company has narrowed its full-year capital expenditures (capex) guidance to between $45 million and $65 million, indicating that investor confidence in the company is strong, owing to the yearly technology advancements and the long-term funding runway. While QS has gained 55%, SES has lost 49% of its post-early-revenue-momentum share price, in part due to execution risks and a longer timescale to scale. 

Investment-wise, the company’s fully solid-state battery technology, which Quantum Scape has advanced, can contribute a revolutionary input to the EV industry, characterized by high energy density, safety, and a well-established industrial connection and financial power. 

The hyphen hybrid AI model of SES AI will provide a diversified market opportunity and an initial velocity of commercial output, but will require attaining the usage of additional scale and uniform growth in revenue to achieve more widespread confidence. 

Future Outlook

The future of the new lithium battery race is developing, and QuantumScape and SES AI will exemplify two promising yet contrasting directions. The commercialization of QuantumScape seems much closer to reality, and its manufacturing cycles can be repeated and lengthened, fueling threats to eliminate the possibility that sometime in the future, some solid-state batteries will make a difference in autos. 

Even the fact that in the case of SES AI, it implements the search for hyperfastness materials through the process of artificial intelligence and that it was extending its business to the sphere of energy storage, could indicate a long-term opportunity to transform most of the industries that use batteries, provided that the bottlenecks of the process are addressed.

In the near future, the battery technology market is expected to be a combination of breakthrough chemistry, scalable production, and strong partnerships. All these innovations of the Cobra separator, suggested by QuantumScape and its strategic partners, put the company at the forefront. 

This might allow electric vehicles to travel greater distances than ever, with less time to charge, and at a higher level of safety. The artificial intelligence platform of the SES AI has the opportunity to fill a significant niche by expanding into additional energy storage and movement facilities.

The success of the milestones achieved by both companies is something to keep track of by investors and industry observers, as it will be the final indicator of whether the potential of next-gen batteries becoming a mass-market reality is realized. 

The increasing demand for clean-energy storage and transportation solutions is now a revolutionary time in the battery industry, and today is the location of the energy revolution of the future.