How a Chinese Megabillionaire Became the Jensen Huang of Batteries

One after the other, four men jumped onto a stage at the front of a darkened, crowded hall one recent evening in central Beijing. Each of them was fired up. The subject: superadvanced batteries.

One of these batteries, a man said, was perfect to power ultra-cheap electric vehicles and another for ultraexpensive ones. A third could almost completely charge a car in 11 minutes, while a fourth could do so in just 6. There was even a battery that could power a big flying car. All of the batteries, the men suggested, were superior to anything available anywhere else.

Presiding over the show from a front-row seat was billionaire Robin Zeng, co-founder and CEO of Chinese battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd. Zeng is one of China’s richest people and perhaps the ultimate avatar of the country’s in-your-face confidence that this is its moment. Arguably more than any other single Chinese entrepreneur, 58-year-old Zeng powerfully reflects the stark threat that many in the West fear in China’s growing technological prowess.

The evening’s climax came when the spotlight went to Zeng, who spent the time depicting his company as a rare island of serious science in an industry filled with “concepts and buzz.” If some unnamed rivals weren’t keeping up with CATL—local or foreign, he didn’t specify—it was because they were wasting their time with “magic solutions to all problems.”