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Kang Sun is out to bust up a battery industry consensus. For years, battery startups have assumed that to succeed they needed to penetrate at least one of three big industries: electric vehicles, stationary storage or portable electronics.

But Sun, CEO of silicon anode developer Amprius Technologies, notes that the pursuit of those industries hasn’t gone very well: A couple of startups have sold their batteries to a fitness device company or two, along with some Chinese-made smartphone makers. But no startup’s batteries are powering any commercial EV; carmakers, instead of adopting new chemistries, have stayed with “good enough” conventional batteries that cost less. And the market for stationary storage batteries is dominated by cheap, low-end batteries largely made in China.

Sun argues, however, that there is enough business outside those industries to create a healthy company. One vibrant future market, he says, is electric aviation, including drones, high- and low-orbiting satellites, and electric flying taxis. Other markets are artificial intelligence data centers and robots.

“Aviation is a big market, actually. It’s growing very, very fast,” Sun told me. “I went to one country. I cannot mention which one. Their vice president told me they need—this is a small country, very small—three million drones. You can imagine.”

As for robots, he says, “They walk. They lift weight. So they need a lot of power.”

There is an investment boom in all the areas Sun cites: The wars in Russia, Ukraine and Israel have created a surge of interest in military drones. And one of Elon Musk’s latest ventures—the Optimus robot—has ignited a similar rush of investor interest in humanoid robots. Both drones and robots require high energy density to run for a long time, as well as high power to land and move fast—the very needs advanced battery startups can address.

Since drones and robots—unlike cars and electronic devices—have not been around a long time, they by and large do not have the same scale of dug-in incumbent companies with longstanding suppliers. And, unlike the consumer car industry, they are not—at least yet—brutally competitive industries that squeeze every last penny out of suppliers. That leaves room for nimble battery startups—whose batteries are often costly—to break in.

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The Trump administration is encouraging them to do so. For instance, China’s DJI dominates the manufacture of drones and drone components, so the Pentagon has made it a priority to quickly build up U.S. drone-making capacity, creating urgency for the batteries that will power them.

Last week, Fremont, Calif.-based Amprius said it had shipped a new generation of prototype batteries meant for long-distance drone flights to an Airbus subsidiary. Sun said these batteries deliver energy density of 450 watt-hours per kilogram, more than 50% greater than virtually anything else sold commercially. That means Amprius batteries can carry a drone much further.

Sun said the company had separately shipped batteries to multiple drone makers that can deliver an also impressive 370 Wh/kg of energy. These were tweaked to deliver that energy fast, which is needed if you are stopping in midair to take a peek at a Russian platoon, or loitering in the sky for hours or days at a time.

Most drone batteries available today, if they can push out power that fast, offer just 200 Wh/kg of energy, said Spencer Gore, a drone expert.

Amprius, founded in 2008 by a Stanford University professor, went public in 2022 in a reverse merger. As we reported last week, its shares have been on a tear, surging more than 200% since the beginning of June.

Sun said that at first when he became CEO in 2017, he tried to break into all three segments. He found that stationary storage was a nonstarter because the price the battery systems makers were prepared to pay to suppliers was so low “it’s like it’s for free.”

EV makers take too long to test the batteries of new suppliers, he said, and even if Amprius got an EV deal, it would need to scale production dramatically if it wanted to turn a profit, an ultraexpensive proposition. “If your battery factory isn’t making a quarter-million EVs, you’re going to make no money at all,” he said.

As for electronics devices, they are dominated by big companies like Apple and Samsung that have largely used the same suppliers for years, he said. “Do you think Apple is going to use an Amprius battery tomorrow?” Sun said.

But the military is prepared to pay top dollar for drone batteries. For niche military applications, batteries can command $1,500 to $3,000 per kilowatt-hour, far more than the $100/kWh carmakers pay for EV batteries.

However, you still have to think big because drones alone are too small a business for a company that has been focused on EV demand.

Gene Berdichevsky, CEO of silicon anode developer Sila Nanotechnologies, took me through the math. Until last year, apart from dabbling in fitness devices, he was ignoring any market but EVs because he didn’t have any additional production capacity on his pilot line. Now, he is hoping for drone orders.

One thing he has quickly understood is that he would have to sell a lot of drone batteries to make them count on his bottom line: Say he got an order for what a major carmaker would consider a small vehicle line—100,000 cars a year. With a 100 kWh battery in each EV, that would be 10 gigawatt-hours of production, Berdichevsky said.

Then take a typical civilian drone that you might fly for taking aerial photos—it might have 100 watt-hours, or about a thousandth the capacity of an EV battery.

“So if you have an auto contract for a tiny program of 100,000 cars, that will be like a 100 million drones for the same production capacity, which is more than all the drones ever made,” Berdichevsky said. “So while you’re touching these high prices for drone batteries, that’s great, but the volumes are small.”

In other words, if you could actually get a contract to supply batteries for a million EVs a year, you would have a grand slam. If you sold a million drone batteries, you would probably rate that a solid single.

So Sun argues that when you’re tackling aviation, you need to think broader than drones. Since 2018, for instance, Amprius has sold high-power cells to Airbus for surveillance satellites. He is also going after air taxis, known as electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, or eVTOLs.

He has also found that stationary storage is a big business, and not monolithic: AI data centers are their own segment, and even the data centers comprise different battery segments.

One requirement of data centers is backup power—batteries that store the electricity gathered by solar panels or wind turbines and deliver it when it’s needed, such as at night, when the sun is no longer shining. The go-to backup batteries are the same cheap, low-end lithium-iron-phosphate batteries—mostly made in China—that utilities use on the grid, and that Tesla employs in its home Powerwalls. No operation in its right mind would use an expensive advanced battery for this purpose.

AI data centers also require surges of power, Sun said: Unlike homes and offices, data centers attempt to avoid any dip in power because their operations are ultraexpensive. That makes them a market for batteries like Amprius’ that can provide a long and fast dollop of power until grid or other base power is restored.

I asked Sun whether all these strands of businesses together—drones, satellites, robots, AI data centers and so on—could comprise a reasonable business. He said they could. “Many of the startups,” he said, “are changing their direction now.”

“Those are the markets Amprius is focusing on,” he said. “I think we placed the right bet a couple of years ago.”

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Moncler Grenoble to Hold Fall Show in Aspen

To be staged on Jan. 31, this will be the first American ski destination show for the brand.

MILAN — Moncler Grenoble is heading to the U.S. for its next outdoor showcase.

The brand’s fall 2026 collection will be unveiled in Aspen, Colo., on Jan. 31 next year. This is the first American ski destination show for the brand.

In March, Moncler Grenoble traveled to Courchevel, the French Alps ski resort located in the Tarentaise Valley. Anne Hathaway, Adrien Brody, Jessica Chastain, Penn Badgley and Brooklyn Beckham, among others, attended the show, which was staged amid a blizzard at the Courchevel Altiport, Europe’s highest airport at 6,588 feet.

In February last year, the brand held its fall 2024 show in Saint Moritz and chairman and chief executive officer Remo Ruffini said at the time that he saw itinerant shows as the future of Grenoble, which are aimed at heightening its visibility.

As reported, Moncler revenues in the Americas were flat at 147.9 million euros in the first half of the year, but in the second quarter, they rose 5 percent at constant exchange, accelerating compared with the previous quarter mainly thanks to the sequential improvement registered in the direct-to-consumer channel.

Commenting on the performance, Gino Fisanotti, Moncler’s chief brand officer, highlighted the “U.S.-oriented initiatives” in the period, ranging from the brand’s first participation at the Met Gala in May to the Moncler Genius collection with Mercedes-Benz by Nigo and the first collection of apparel collaborating with Donald Glover’s Gilga Farm unveiled in June, among others. Fisanotti also said Moncler Grenoble was “the fastest growing” in the period.

Moncler Grenoble owes its name to the city that hosted the Olympic Games in 1968, when the brand was the French national ski team’s official supplier. The first Grenoble collection was presented in New York in January 2010 during the city’s fashion week.

In 2022, Moncler rebooted Grenoble as the brand’s “high-performance” division, flanked by the fashion-forward Moncler Genius line and the lifestyle Moncler Collection.

The risks of decline go far beyond any single company

Europe’s automakers face mounting problems. For over a decade, an industry historically associated with technological and engineering excellence has concealed less flattering truths about high costs and stagnating output. Now faced with a trade conflict and accelerating Asian rivals, the ability of Volkswagen and others to restructure is a litmus test for whether European industry can remain globally relevant.

Our company embodies the challenge ahead. For too long we have operated under the assumption that growth would offset rising costs and underutilised capacity. Fuelled by profits from China and strong sales of premium brands such as Porsche and Audi, Volkswagen tried to grow its way out of the problem instead of addressing structural inefficiencies. When demand softened, the consequences became clear — declining margins, idle factories, and fast-moving rivals first from the US and now China grabbing share on their home turf.

But this is not just Volkswagen’s challenge. The auto industry remains a pillar of Europe’s economy. According to McKinsey, manufacturers, suppliers, finance providers and after-sale care services together account for 7 per cent of Europe’s GDP and support nearly 14mn jobs across the continent. The sector also drives wider growth: every euro invested generates more than twice that in added value in the broader economic landscape. The risks of decline go far beyond any single company.

Carmakers’ woes also reflect a deeper, long-term issue: Europe’s widening productivity gap. Over the past 25 years, labour productivity growth in the US has outpaced that of Europe by at least a percentage point on average per year. Today, the consequences are stark. According to Goldman Sachs, labour productivity per person employed in the US is, adjusted for purchasing power, between 35 and 45 per cent higher than in France, Germany and the UK — and the divide continues to grow.

Volkswagen Group is confronting these challenges head-on with tough decisions. We have reduced production capacity by 750,000 automobiles in our German plants. We have limited wage growth. And we are reducing our workforce by 35,000 in Germany alone by 2030 to boost productivity both in terms of labour and capital. These steps are not easy, but they are necessary in a world where competitiveness is non-negotiable. At the same time, we are investing decisively in the future, allocating €165bn over the next five years to drive electrification and digitalisation while expanding into areas such as autonomous driving.

But one thing has become clear: investment alone is not enough. Structural reform must come first — both at Volkswagen and in the European Union. Without changing how we work, build and organise, even the boldest investments will fall short. Long-term industrial competitiveness depends on core efficiency.

Priority reforms for the EU include more flexible labour markets and smarter regulation that supports rather than stifles innovation. It also means being pragmatic: securing access to critical raw materials and adopting technology partnerships where speed matters more than self-sufficiency. That’s why Volkswagen and others have entered tech-focused joint ventures with partners in China and North America. The goal: to speed up development of software, architecture, and platforms — while scaling faster and reducing costs, instead of building everything in-house.

All of this requires more ambition. Europe must become a place where bold ideas are not just researched but industrialised and scaled up across a common market. “Profit” should not be something we need to excuse. It is the foundation for a sustainable business model and for securing jobs and prosperity.

There has been some progress. The Draghi report on European competitiveness set the right tone. But speed and scale remain lacking. One example: EU battery regulations due to be advanced this year risk imposing costs and complexity that disadvantage local producers. Given that batteries account for the single largest part of an electric vehicle’s cost, this is not just a technicality — it’s a strategic issue.

At Volkswagen, we’ve embarked on change, and the initial results are promising. But the road ahead is long and winding. The ingredients for Europe’s renewal exist, too. What made the continent strong in the first place — a passion for innovation, a commitment to education, a culture of performance — should be its guiding values. To move forward, we must now choose structural reform over complacency, performance over nostalgia, and bold adaptation over rigid tradition. The future of European industry depends on it.