Since 2025, capital's attitude towards energy storage has shifted from "crazy bets" to "rational cultivation". According to public information, from 2022 to 2024, capital institutions such as Sequoia and Hillhouse have cumulatively invested over 47 billion yuan, causing the energy storage industry to fall into a "capital frenzy".

But in 2025, the direction has changed, and the elimination of low-end production capacity is accelerating. The investment logic focuses on "technological innovation+ecological narrative" and so on. At this critical juncture, who is still heavily storing energy? This article refers to the influx of cross-border players or the continuous increase of energy storage companies.

Recently, Longi Green Energy has established Chuwei New Energy and several energy storage companies associated with its executives. Various signs indicate that Longi Green Energy is trying to fill the gap in energy storage. In February of this year, at the 25th anniversary celebration of the establishment of Longi Green Energy, the head of the company, Li Zhenguo, also publicly stated that he is exploring solutions that combine energy storage.

In May, Hebei Construction Investment established Construction Investment Energy Storage New Energy Technology Co., Ltd; Lanshi Heavy Industries established Lanshi Energy Storage Technology Co., Ltd.

In April, Guangdong New Energy Storage National Research Institute Co., Ltd. added five companies under Guangzhou Automobile Group, including Youpai Energy Technology and Jiehuate, as shareholders.

As early as September last year, Guangdong Energy Group and Nanwang Technology jointly invested to establish Guangdong Energy Storage Industry Development Co., Ltd. (tentative name).

Since 2025, the energy storage industry has encountered a policy "earthquake", with the cancellation of mandatory storage allocation on the source network side and the failure of the peak valley arbitrage model for industry and commerce. Energy storage may face significant changes, with the reconstruction of revenue models becoming key.

In the midst of great changes, it is not difficult to find that some companies are targeting subtle directions, or crossing boundaries or further expanding their layout. Despite the overall pressure on the industry, new forces are still emerging in segmented tracks.

On January 24th, Changzhou Shangwei Environmental Services released the bidding and procurement of the first batch of energy storage system framework agreements for 2025. The project is located in Jiangsu Province. The estimated total procurement capacity of the project is 2GWh, and the energy storage control method is a string type energy storage system, requiring three specifications of 1h, 2h, and 4h.

Public information shows that the bidding enterprise Changzhou Shangwei Environmental Services was just established in September 2024 and was approved on January 17, 2025, engaged in ecological protection and environmental governance. This is not an isolated case.

Compared to cross-border activities before 2025, "cross-border" is no longer a new phenomenon, but the logic of cross-border players has shifted from blindly following trends to strategic deepening.

The primary change is that more cross-border players hope to expand their horizons with their own talents.

The general logic for us to choose whether to enter an industry is that labor-intensive industries will definitely not be done because they have no added value; they are already widely avoided domestically; and they do not have the ability to do so

Midea Group Chairman Fang Hongbo explained the logic behind their investment in a certain field in this way. This is also a summary of the mentality of many cross-border players who are still heavily involved in energy storage since 2025.

But 'clarity of mind' does not mean that these crossovers need to undergo fewer tests than 'predecessors'. In the context of 2025, it is not difficult to feel that blindly entering energy storage enterprises will feel even more chill.

In January of this year, Document No. 136 explicitly cancelled the 8-year "mandatory storage allocation" policy, marking the industry's shift from "policy feeding" to "market foraging". This adjustment has ended the mandatory bundling of new energy projects with energy storage, but it has also put small and medium-sized enterprises that rely on policy dividends in a crisis of survival.

Data shows that the average utilization rate of new energy distribution and storage projects in 2024 is only 32%, and even less than 7% in places such as Shandong and Sichuan. After the relaxation of policies, market mechanisms have become dominant, and energy storage needs to realize its value through market-oriented paths such as peak valley price differences, auxiliary services, and capacity leasing.

In April, Document No. 394 required full coverage of the electricity spot market by the end of 2025, and promoted the upgrading of energy storage from a "peak shaving and valley filling" tool to a "dynamic balancer". And documents such as the "New Energy Storage Safety Technical Specification" accelerate the clearance of low-quality production capacity through strict safety standards. The policy shift has forced the industry to shift from "heavy machinery" to "practical effectiveness".

According to relevant data, in the first four months of 2025 alone, over 10000 small and medium-sized integrators went bankrupt.

At the same time, Qichacha still shows that many newly established enterprises are mostly focused on the "two ends" of the "smile curve" of the energy storage industry chain.

The smile curve refers to the overall high profit margin at the upstream and downstream ends of the industrial chain, while the integration and engineering industries in the midstream have lower profit margins.

In 2024, based on the profit margin of the energy storage industry, the explosive "high at both ends and low in the middle" industrial chain smile curve of the energy storage industry revealed that the competition focus of the energy storage industry at that time was mostly on energy storage integration and energy storage engineering.

By 2025, emerging or heavy warehouse enterprises will mostly focus on downstream links such as energy storage operation and maintenance, trading, and energy custody.

According to statistics from Gaogong Energy Storage, most of the active or top companies in the industry in the first half of this year have shifted their focus to energy storage operation and trading. Many battery cell and integration companies have already seized the "high ground" of AI operation and maintenance.

If technological upheaval is a characteristic. So the coexistence of reshuffling and rebirth also reflects the "oscillation" characteristics of the energy storage industry in 2025.

In the current highly volatile industry, overseas markets remain an important growth pole for the energy storage industry and a profitable market for many energy storage companies. According to incomplete statistics, by 2025, Chinese energy storage companies will have won over 100 GWh of overseas orders, with the Middle East, Europe, South America and other core markets.

The global transformation of the energy storage industry confirms the essence of competition. This is never a price battle for a hundred meter sprint, but a long journey of technology, mode, and global operation.

For more surviving companies, this is not the end point, but a new starting point.