Robin Zeng was born in a village in the mountains of Fujian, southeast China.

With a PhD from the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, he began his career with a stateowned shipbuilding company in his home province.

He then devoted many years of his career to lithium batteries for electronic products with his company ATL, created in 1999.

His customers at the time were manufacturers of gadgets or mobile phones such as Motorola, Nokia or Apple established in southern China, at the time “the factory of the world”. Spotted by the Japanese TDK, famous for its audio cassettes, ATL was sold to TDK in 2005 for $100M. Often seen as the anti-Elon Musk by virtue of his discretion, Robin Zeng is also ambitious. In 2011, at age 43, the engineer made a daring bet: to set up an ATL spin-off in automotive batteries. This is the launch of Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL). Robin is a visionary, we are in the early days of this very lucrative market today and only a thousand new energy vehicles were sold in China that year. A year later, Robin Zeng obtained a partnership with BMW. CATL is increasing its partnerships and today counts Volkswagen, Ford, Daimler and Hyundai among its customers. The manufacturer is competing with its compatriot BYD, the Japanese Panasonic, the American Tesla and the South Koreans Samsung SDI and LG Chem. In 10 years, the low-key entrepreneur has made his company one of the world’s largest producers of batteries for electric vehicles, with expansion plans far exceeding those of Tesla.

The company, based in Ningde, not far from the birthplace of its founder, has experienced huge growth in recent years.

Growth supported by the provinces and the Chinese central government, which intends to make China the automotive leader of tomorrow by boosting the market for electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids. Initially still linked to ATL and TDK, the entrepreneur took advantage of his technological contribution but chose to part with it completely in 2015. An enlightened decision since CATL benefited the following year from subsidies for the purchase of electric vehicles equipped with batteries of purely national production. Robin Zeng invests heavily in R&D and benefits from its “pure player” positioning, which reassures manufacturers. Unlike BYD, in particular, which also manufactures cars. In 2018, the leader moved up a gear by launching CATL on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. Valued at $10Bn when it went public, the company saw its share jump 44% a few days later. The company is now valued at $141Bn. Robin Zeng has since seen his fortune explode and he’s not the only one to benefit from this meteoric rise. CATL can claim to have generated nine billionaires, more than Google and Facebook (eight). Only Chinese soy sauce maker Foshan Haitian reportedly did the same.

2020 has been a successful year for the company. Its revenue has jumped 10%, its net profit by 22% and 2021 is showing promise.

Indeed, with the end of many subsidies and opening up to wider competition, conquering the international market is objective 1. Robin Zeng is counting on the multiplication of partnerships and the increase in worldwide sales. Since early 2020, CATL has also been a supplier to the Tesla gigafactory. 2021 is also the year for the opening of a CATL plant in Germany closer to car manufacturers. The company already has a giant factory in Ningde tasked with developing next-generation batteries. Robin Zeng lives in Ningde, China. Very silent in the media, we know that leader holds 26% of CATL.