Turbo Energy and Hithium tie up on AI storage software
Turbo Energy (Nasdaq: TURB) has announced a strategic partnership with Chinese battery manufacturer Hithium to integrate Turbo's proprietary AI-driven software into Hithium's energy storage systems. The agreement targets commercial and industrial (C&I) customers across Europe and Latin America, with the companies positioning the collaboration as a move toward software-defined energy storage infrastructure.
Under the terms of the deal, Turbo Energy's platform will sit atop Hithium's hardware, converting static battery installations into what the company describes as adaptive energy assets capable of responding to price signals, load conditions and grid dynamics. The release does not disclose the financial terms of the partnership, revenue-share arrangements, or specific customer commitments beyond the existing pipeline.
The deal in context
The announcement builds on a previously disclosed $53 million contract — secured ahead of this partnership — to deploy around 366 MWh of solar energy storage across more than ten industrial sites in Spain for an unnamed major industrial group. Turbo Energy is presenting the Hithium agreement as a platform to replicate and extend that model across new geographies.
Mariano Soria, chief executive of Turbo Energy, said energy storage is "no longer defined by hardware alone — it is defined by how intelligently that infrastructure operates." Kelson Li, vice president of Hithium Europe, cited the company's top-two ranking for global energy storage battery shipments in 2025, citing data from InfoLink, SMM and ICC, as evidence of the scale Hithium brings to the partnership.
Hithium reported cumulative lithium-ion battery shipments of over 100 GWh by 2025 and currently supplies more than 18 European countries. The company claims a world-first deployment of a 1,175 Ah battery cell project, though independent verification of that claim was not provided in the release.
Market landscape
The C&I energy storage segment is seeing intensifying competition as solar-plus-storage economics improve across southern Europe and Latin America. Battery hardware has commoditised rapidly, compressing margins for pure-play manufacturers and pushing differentiation toward software layers — demand forecasting, dynamic tariff arbitrage and grid-services participation. Turbo Energy's strategy of pairing a proprietary optimisation stack with third-party hardware mirrors approaches taken by a number of well-funded software-defined energy startups, as well as larger players such as Schneider Electric and Eaton in the industrial energy management space.
For Hithium, the partnership addresses a recognised gap: Chinese battery manufacturers with substantial manufacturing scale have struggled to compete on software sophistication in European markets where customer expectations around grid-integration and digital management are rising.
Regulatory read-across
Both target geographies carry meaningful regulatory tailwinds and compliance requirements. In Europe, the revised Renewable Energy Directive (RED III) and the EU's Net-Zero Industry Act are accelerating permitting and procurement for energy storage, while grid operators in Spain, Italy and Germany are expanding revenue streams available to behind-the-meter assets through flexibility markets. Latin American markets — particularly Chile, Brazil and Colombia — are at earlier stages of storage regulation but are moving quickly as grid instability and high industrial electricity prices create commercial urgency.
Turbo Energy has flagged that it expects international deployments to contribute increasing proportions of higher-margin, software-driven revenue, though the company stopped short of providing guidance on timing or quantum of that contribution.