@FinanceYF5: AASF 2026: Yi Cui presents seven companies in 25 minutes 1/ Yi Cui covered seven companies in 25 minutes, with only one main thread: from science to solutions, from lab to market. The selection criterion is even simpler—can science and technology truly solve this social problem?

AASF 2026: Cui Yi Covers Seven Companies in 25 Minutes

1/ Cui Yi wraps up seven companies in 25 minutes, with a single thread running through it all: From science to solutions, from lab to market.

The topic-selection criterion is even simpler: For this societal problem, can science and technology genuinely solve it? https://t.co/1pDErzdWj9

2/ He laid out four big challenges for batteries: Can energy density reach 500 or even 1000 Wh/kg? Can lifespan hit 30,000 cycles, 30 years? Can fast charging get down to 10 minutes? Can it be completely safe?

He added one more on the spot — cost: can it drop another 5x, to $10 per kWh? Solve any one of these, and it’s a game changer.

3/ He calls the energy density roadmap “my retirement plan.”

Graphite/NMC 250 → Silicon/NMC 350-500 → Lithium metal/NMC 500 → Lithium metal/Sulfur 1000. He arrived at Stanford at 29; a professorial career runs roughly 40 to 50 years, retiring at 79. This chart has been in progress for 14 to 15 years — right about at the halfway point.

4/ Path one: push performance to the limit.

Silicon can store about 4 lithium ions, an order of magnitude more than graphite, at the cost of swelling 400% and the material shattering. Nanoscience was used across 12 generations of design; the exit was Amprius, which went public in 2022, with products reaching 500 Wh/kg.

5/ Path two is the most counterintuitive: stationary storage needs to be designed for 30 years.

Verification takes 30 years — longer than his career has room for, so instead of inventing something new, he went back 160 years into electrochemical history to find what had already been proven.

What he found was nickel-hydrogen batteries — used by Hubble and the ISS for 30 years. The people who built them had long since retired, and everyone had forgotten them.

6/ Swap in low-cost catalysts, and the same chemistry keeps working. He calls it the “battery that never dies”: overchargeable, abusable, won’t catch fire even when thrown into flames. That’s EnerVenue, and it’s being sold to power grids and AI data centers.

7/ Path three isn’t really a battery at all: Raising the AC by 3°C saves an average of 30% of global energy, the only problem is human comfort.

So they made a personal air conditioner built into clothing. What’s truly worth remembering is that move of digging through history to recover forgotten technology.

Is there something like that in your industry — lying dormant, waiting for someone to pick it back up?

That’s all.

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