On September 21, VNET announced that the strategic investment in the company by a CATL affiliate had closed, at a total consideration of approximately USD 942 million (about RMB 6.4 billion). Upon closing, the buyers hold roughly 38.1% of the company, becoming its largest shareholder, while under the voting arrangements that took effect simultaneously, control of the company remains with the founding team. The deep binding between a battery leader and a computing operator has now entered a substantive phase.
1. Deal Structure: 38.1% Equity and Delegated Voting
The buyers are PJ Millennium I Limited and PJ Millennium II Limited, both wholly-owned subsidiaries of PJ Millennium Limited Partnership and uncontrolled, non-consolidated affiliates of CATL. Together they acquired 650,424,192 Class A ordinary shares at USD 1.4486 per ordinary share (USD 8.6914 per ADS), for a total consideration of approximately USD 942 million, or about RMB 6.4 billion. Based on roughly 1.70897 billion ordinary shares outstanding as of June 30, 2026, the buyers hold 38.1% upon closing. The deal was announced on May 13 and had been expected to close in the fourth quarter; the actual closing came ahead of schedule.
The governance arrangements are equally clear: an investor rights agreement and a voting and consortium agreement took effect upon closing, under which the CATL affiliate must exercise its voting rights as directed by Sheng Chen, VNET’s founder and executive chairman, and is subject to a lock-up period. In other words, the CATL affiliate has become the largest shareholder, but control remains with the founding team. The previous industrial shareholder, Shandong Hi-Speed Holdings Group, exited at the same time—having invested at USD 0.4597 per share in late 2023 for a total of USD 299 million, it realized a return of about 215%.
From an industry perspective, the structure is instructive: binding computing asset owners through equity investment while defusing control contests through delegated voting rights—the "capital tie plus strategic synergy" model offers a replicable template for cooperation between energy companies and computing operators.
2. Strategic Cooperation: A Three-Layer Computing-Electricity Coordination System
The equity closing is the key move in the two companies’ cooperation. In August this year, VNET and CATL signed a strategic cooperation agreement centered on deep computing-electricity integration, building a three-layer computing-electricity coordination system of "gigawatt-scale computing-electricity factories + distributed computing-electricity networks + a zero-carbon token ecosystem", covering new technology applications such as green direct current and green-power direct connection. VNET contributes its capabilities in integrated computing-electricity operations and full-scenario computing infrastructure construction—more than 50 data centers, over 6,000 customers and nearly 30 years of "electricity-to-compute" engineering expertise make it a landing channel that takes storage and green-power solutions directly into data centers—while CATL contributes full-stack energy technology and zero-carbon new energy solutions.
CATL has been moving rapidly in the computing-electricity coordination arena: alongside the VNET investment, it also invested in the power equipment maker Zhongheng Electric in the same period. Battery leaders are no longer content with supplying cells; they are deploying capital into computing energy infrastructure, and "equity for channels" is becoming a new commercial form of computing-electricity coordination.
3. Fundamentals: Operating Capacity Tops 1 GW
VNET’s business fundamentals underpin the cooperation. In the second quarter of 2026, the company’s wholesale IDC operating capacity grew 49.4% year on year to 1,007 MW, exceeding 1 GW for the first time, with a contracted rate of 96.3%. New wholesale orders so far this year totaled 862 MW, including a 345 MW order from a leading cloud computing customer in the Beijing-surrounding region. The company’s total operating and reserved capacity has surpassed 4 GW, with a clear growth path in both domestic and international markets.
4. Industry Resonance: Computing-Electricity Coordination Rises to National Strategy
Computing-electricity coordination was written into China’s government work report for the first time in 2026, marking its formal elevation to a national strategy. According to the National Energy Administration, national computing electricity consumption is expected to increase by more than 100 billion kWh annually during the 15th Five-Year Plan period, reaching 800 billion kWh by 2030, or about 6% of total electricity consumption. Against this backdrop, the resonance of the "energy company plus computing operator" binding model is clear: energy storage and green power gain a stable consumption scenario, while data centers gain a low-carbon, reliable energy foundation.
VNET says it will use the cooperation to drive major technological and industrial innovation in its dual-engine business model of "wholesale hyperscale IDC + urban retail IDC", and to pursue high-quality growth through new engines—"gigawatt-scale AIDC campuses with green-power direct connection" and "hyper-connected urban computing with edge-integrated AIDC new retail"—as it upgrades toward an agent-native next-generation AIDC strategy. Going forward, the two companies will deepen their coordination and jointly build the next-generation digital energy infrastructure for the AI era.
Source material: VNET announcements and public media reports
