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Electric vehicles have come a long way, but let’s be real—they still have their hangups: “range anxiety,” long charging times, and questions about safety and sustainability. But what if all those worries could be put to rest?

At IAA Mobility in Munich, CATL, one of the world’s biggest battery makers, unveiled a new technology that could revolutionize EVs.

Shenxing Pro: Go Far, Last Long

CATL debuted two versions of its next-gen Shenxing Pro battery. One is all about distance and durability. Picture this: a single charge gets you up to 758 km (or about 470 miles). That’s enough to drive from Houston to Memphis without a single stop. And it’s not just about the distance; this thing is built to last. It promises a lifespan of 12 years or 1,000,000 km, with only around 9% degradation after 200,000 km. That’s a huge leap from today’s EV batteries, which often lose up to 30% of their capacity over the same period.

Fast Charging, Even When It’s Freezing

Tired of waiting around for your car to charge? The second version of the Shenxing Pro is for you. It’s the Super Fast Charging model, designed to get you back on the road in minutes. CATL says it can add a whopping 478 km of range in just 10 minutes under perfect conditions. And here’s the best part: it holds its own in the cold. We all know how much cold weather messes with most EV batteries, but the Shenxing Pro still delivers up to 410 km of range in just 20 minutes at a chilling -20°C. That’s better than many EVs perform in normal temperatures!

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No Propagation 3.0: Safety First

Safety is a top concern with EV batteries, especially the risk of thermal runaway—that’s when one cell overheats and triggers a dangerous chain reaction. CATL’s new No Propagation 3.0 platform is engineered to stop that domino effect cold. It uses special fireproof coatings and a cell structure that quickly cools down and relieves pressure. In the rare event of a problem, the battery can still provide stable power for over an hour. That extra time is a lifeline, giving drivers the chance to get to safety and ensuring critical systems like advanced driver-assistance features stay online when you need them most.

Getting Greener, At Scale

CATL is also tackling the sustainability issue head-on. Through a new initiative called the Global Energy Circular Commitment (GECC), they aim to cut the use of new raw materials by half over the next two decades. They’re already a leader in this space, operating the world’s largest battery recycling network. Since 2024, they’ve recycled over 130,000 tons of used batteries, recovering 99.6% of crucial metals like nickel, cobalt, and manganese.

The Whole Package

What’s so impressive about the Shenxing Pro isn’t just one feature—it’s everything working together. By improving range, charging speed, safety, and sustainability all at once, CATL isn’t just fixing a single problem; they’re taking on the biggest obstacles to widespread EV adoption. If these batteries live up to the hype, the next wave of EVs could be more efficient, more reliable, and a whole lot greener.

The bottom line? CATL’s latest battery tech in tandem with other commitments could prove to be the building blocks for the next wave of EVs in Europe and beyond.

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IONNA and Casey’s to bring more fast charging to the US Midwest

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IONNA and Casey’s to bring more fast charging to the US Midwest

Charging network IONNA is partnering with Casey’s, one of the US’s largest convenience store and pizza chains, to bring DC fast charging to EV drivers across the Midwest.

Starting this year, Casey’s customers can plug into IONNA’s 400 kW charging stations while grabbing a slice or stocking up on road-trip essentials. Eight “Rechargeries” are already under construction in six states and are expected to open in 2025:

  • Little Rock, Arkansas
  • Vernon Hills, Illinois
  • McHenry, Illinois
  • Terre Haute, Indiana
  • Parkville, Missouri
  • Kearney, Missouri
  • Blackwell, Oklahoma
  • Waco, Texas

The Casey’s deal pushes IONNA past 900 charging bays in construction or operation — more than double what it had just three months ago. IONNA says the partnership will “expand,” but doesn’t provide specifics.

“This partnership with Casey’s is key to expanding our presence in America’s heartland,” said IONNA CEO Seth Cutler. “With a shared respect and commitment to delivering quality customer experience, we are pleased to add Casey’s to our growing network of partners.”

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IONNA is a joint venture backed by eight of the world’s biggest automakers – BMW, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis, and Toyota – working to rapidly scale a DC fast-charging network in the US.

Read more: Wawa is getting ultra-fast EV chargers from IONNA


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Google and Anthropic announce cloud deal worth tens of billions of dollars

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Google and Anthropic announce cloud deal worth tens of billions of dollars

Google, Anthropic agree to cloud deal worth tens of billions of dollars

Anthropic and Google officially announced their cloud partnership Thursday, a deal that gives the artificial intelligence company access to up to one million of Google’s custom-designed Tensor Processing Units, or TPUs.

The deal, which is worth tens of billions of dollars, is the company’s largest TPU commitment yet and is expected to bring well over a gigawatt of AI compute capacity online in 2026.

Industry estimates peg the cost of a 1-gigawatt data center at around $50 billion, with roughly $35 billion of that typically allocated to chips.

While competitors tout even loftier projections — OpenAI’s 33-gigawatt “Stargate” chief among them — Anthropic’s move is a quiet power play rooted in execution, not spectacle.

Founded by former OpenAI researchers, the company has deliberately adopted a slower, steadier ethos, one that is efficient, diversified, and laser-focused on the enterprise market.

Anthropic launches Claude Sonnet 4.5, its latest AI model

A key to Anthropic’s infrastructure strategy is its multi-cloud architecture.

The company’s Claude family of language models runs across Google’s TPUs, Amazon’s custom Trainium chips, and Nvidia’s GPUs, with each platform assigned to specialized workloads like training, inference, and research.

Google said the TPUs offer Anthropic “strong price-performance and efficiency.”

“Anthropic and Google have a longstanding partnership and this latest expansion will help us continue to grow the compute we need to define the frontier of AI,” said Anthropic CFO Krishna Rao in a release.

Anthropic’s ability to spread workloads across vendors lets it fine-tune for price, performance, and power constraints.

According to a person familiar with the company’s infrastructure strategy, every dollar of compute stretches further under this model than those locked into single-vendor architectures.

Google, for its part, is leaning into the partnership.

“Anthropic’s choice to significantly expand its usage of TPUs reflects the strong price-performance and efficiency its teams have seen with TPUs for several years,” said Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian in a release, touting the company’s seventh-generation “Ironwood” accelerator as part of a maturing portfolio.

Anthropic takes a page from Palantir as AI battle with OpenAI goes global

Claude’s breakneck revenue growth

Anthropic’s escalating compute demand reflects its explosive business growth.

The company’s annual revenue run rate is now approaching $7 billion, and Claude powers more than 300,000 businesses — a staggering 300× increase over the past two years. The number of large customers, each contributing more than $100,000 in run-rate revenue, has grown nearly sevenfold in the past year.

Claude Code, the company’s agentic coding assistant, generated $500 million in annualized revenue within just two months of launch, which Anthropic claims makes it the “fastest-growing product” in history.

While Google is powering Anthropic’s next phase of compute expansion, Amazon remains its most deeply embedded partner.

The retail and cloud giant has invested $8 billion in Anthropic to date, more than double Google’s confirmed $3 billion in equity.

Still, AWS is considered Anthropic’s chief cloud provider, making its influence structural and not just financial.

Its custom-built supercomputer for Claude, known as Project Rainier, runs on Amazon’s Trainium 2 chips. That shift matters not just for speed, but for cost: Trainium avoids the premium margins of other chips, enabling more compute per dollar spent.

AWS outage ripples across internet, puts pressure on Amazon ahead of earnings

Wall Street is already seeing results.

Rothschild & Co Redburn analyst Alex Haissl estimated that Anthropic added one to two percentage points to AWS’s growth in last year’s fourth quarter and this year’s first, with its contribution expected to exceed five points in the second half of 2025.

Wedbush’s Scott Devitt previously told CNBC that once Claude becomes a default tool for enterprise developers, that usage flows directly into AWS revenue — a dynamic he believes will drive AWS growth for “many, many years.”

Google, meanwhile, continues to play a pivotal role. In January, the company agreed to a new $1 billion investment in Anthropic, adding to its previous $2 billion and 10% equity stake.

Critically, Anthropic’s multicloud approach proved resilient during Monday’s AWS outage, which did not impact Claude thanks to its diversified architecture.

Still, Anthropic isn’t playing favorites. The company maintains control over model weights, pricing, and customer data — and has no exclusivity with any cloud provider. That neutral stance could prove key as competition among hyperscalers intensifies.

WATCH: Anthropic’s Mike Krieger on new model release and the race to build real-world AI agents

Anthropic’s Mike Krieger on new model release and the race to build real-world AI agents

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JB Straubel’s Redwood snags $350M to deploy more US-made battery storage

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JB Straubel’s Redwood snags 0M to deploy more US-made battery storage

Redwood Materials, founded by former Tesla CTO and cofounder JB Straubel, has raised $350 million in new funding to scale its US-made battery storage systems and critical materials operations. The company is ramping up to meet surging demand from AI data centers and the clean energy sector.

The oversubscribed Series E round was led by Eclipse, with participation from NVentures, NVIDIA’s venture capital arm, and other new strategic investors.

As global supplies tighten, the US is racing to secure domestic production of critical materials like lithium, nickel, cobalt, and copper. In July, Redwood and GM signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding to turn new and second-life GM batteries into energy storage systems. Redwood launched a new venture in June called Redwood Energy that repurposes both new and used EV battery packs into fast and cost-effective energy storage systems.

Redwood says large-scale battery storage is the fastest and most scalable way to enable new AI data center rollout while unlocking stranded generation capacity and stabilizing the grid. Battery storage also helps industrial facilities electrify and balance renewable energy output. The company aims to deliver a new generation of affordable, US-built energy storage systems designed to serve the grid, heavy industry, and AI data centers, reducing dependence on imported Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries.

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Redwood will use the new capital to expand energy storage deployments, refining and materials production capacity, and its engineering and operations teams.

Read more: Redwood is repurposing GM’s EV batteries into energy storage


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