CATL has received the World Economic Forum’s 2026 MINDS Award for its artificial intelligence-based battery design platform, recognising the company’s use of physics-informed machine learning to accelerate lithium-ion battery development, the WEF said.
The award, part of the WEF’s Meaningful, Intelligent, Novel, Deployable Solutions (MINDS) programme, was granted to CATL’s project titled “Augmented Intelligence Leading Next-Generation Lithium-ion Battery Design.” Only 15 organisations worldwide were selected for the 2026 cohort, which evaluates AI initiatives across strategy, talent, data, technology and governance.
See also: CATL to Start Using Sodium-Ion Batteries in Passenger Cars as Early as Q2
According to the WEF, CATL’s Intelligent Cell Design platform leverages more than 50 million data records and around 600 terabytes of test data to generate virtual battery cell designs within minutes. By combining physics-based electrochemical models with machine learning algorithms, the platform achieves prediction accuracy of up to 95 percent, significantly reducing reliance on traditional trial-and-error prototyping.
The system operates on an on-premises private cloud and draws on training data from more than 100,000 historical battery design cases, as well as aftermarket performance data from a wide range of new energy vehicles. The WEF said CATL had “turned a deep reservoir of proprietary, multimodal data into a sustained AI advantage.”
See also: CATL Launches Sodium-Ion Battery for Light Commercial Vehicles
Battery development has traditionally depended on manual experimentation and individual engineers’ experience, resulting in long evaluation cycles and high costs. With electric vehicle development timelines now compressed to roughly 18 months and new energy vehicle penetration exceeding 50 percent in some markets, automakers are under pressure to secure batteries that meet increasingly customised performance and safety requirements.
CATL said its platform enables forward-looking design by evaluating electrochemical constraints digitally and generating design recommendations in seconds, allowing engineers to prioritise performance, safety or cost before physical production begins.
See also: Changan Auto Group, CATL Deepen Strategic Partnership With Five-Year Agreement
“In complex industrial scenarios like battery production, relying solely on artificial intelligence can’t solve core problems,” said Ni Jun, chief manufacturing officer and co-president of the engineering manufacturing system at CATL. “By integrating our intelligent design system with engineers’ in-depth understanding of material properties, process principles and system engineering, we can strengthen the human–AI partnership.”
The MINDS programme is overseen by the Centre for AI Excellence at the World Economic Forum and focuses on identifying deployable AI solutions that deliver measurable impact while promoting responsible adoption across industries.
