Silicon anodes appear to be leading the way in the race to commercialize next-generation battery technologies for electric vehicles.

The buzz around silicon-based anodes, which promise improved power and faster charging capabilities for EVs, has been growing in recent months — just as the hype around solid-state batteries seems to have fizzled.

It comes as increasing EV sales continue to drive up global battery demand, prompting auto giants to team up with major cell manufacturers on the road to full electrification.

While some OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) have inked deals with solid-state battery developers, carmakers such as Mercedes, Porsche and GM have all bet big on silicon anodes to deliver transformative change in the science behind EVs.

A recent report from consultancy IDTechEx described the promise of advanced silicon anode materials as “immense” for improving critical areas of battery performance, noting that this potential hadn’t gone unnoticed by carmakers and key players in the battery industry.

It warned, however, that challenges such as cycle life, shelf life and — perhaps most importantly — cost, need to be addressed for widespread adoption.

Venkat Srinivasan, director of the Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science at the U.S. government’s Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago, said silicon anodes appear to have the edge over solid-state batteries.

“If there’s a horse race, silicon does seem to be ahead at least at this moment, but we haven’t commercialized either one of them,” Srinivasan told CNBC via videoconference.

Srinivasan said five years ago silicon-anode batteries had a calendar life of roughly one year, but recent data appears to show a dramatic improvement in the durability of these materials, with some tests now projecting a three to four-year calendar life.

Unlike the cycle life of a battery, which counts the number of times it can be charged and discharged, the calendar life measures degradation over time. Typically, the calendar life of a battery refers to the period in which it can function at over 80% of its initial capacity, regardless of its usage.

Srinivasan said solid-state batteries, long billed as the “holy grail” of sustainable driving, still have a long way to go before they can match the recent progress made by silicon anodes.

“That transition still has to be made in solid-state with their metal batteries and that’s why I think you’re hearing from people that, hey, it looks like that promise hasn’t panned out,” Srinivasan said.

“That doesn’t mean we won’t get there. It may happen in a few years. It just means that it feels like today silicon is in a different part of the technology readiness level.”

Japan’s Toyota and Nissan have both said they are aiming to bring solid-state batteries into mass production over the coming years, while China’s SAIC Motor Corp reportedly said in early September that its MG brand would equip cars with solid-state batteries within the next 12 months.

Nonetheless, analysts remain skeptical about when solid-state batteries will actually make it to market.

Georgiev said several industry players have been looking into the potential of silicon anodes, from well-established anode suppliers in China and South Korea to new players like Taiwan’s ProLogium and U.S. manufacturers Group14 and Sila Nanotechnologies.

“Especially in the West, advances in the area of silicon anodes [are] seen as strategic opportunity to catch up with China, which dominates the graphite-based anode supply chains with Chinese anode producers holding 98% of the global anode market for batteries,” Georgiev said.

“However, there are significant technical challenges going to 100% silicon anode such as silicon expansion affecting the longevity of the batteries and currently there are several routes to produce silicon anodes,” he added.

Taiwanese battery maker ProLogium debuted the world’s first fully silicon anode battery at the Paris Motor Show last month, saying it’s new fast-charging battery system not only surpassed traditional lithium-ion batteries in performance and charging efficiency but also “critical industry challenges.”

ProLogium, citing test data, said it’s 100% silicon anode battery could charge from 5% to 60% in just 5 minutes, and reach 80% in 8.5 minutes. It described the advancement as an “unmatched achievement in the competitive EV market,” which will help to reduce charging times and extend the range of EVs.

Fastmarkets’ Georgiev said a big question mark over the commercialization of silicon anodes is the cost of production and whether any of the major silicon-anode producers “could produce material at scale with a consistent quality and at a competitive price — [a] major requirements of OEMs.”

“At this stage silicon anodes are used more as an additive to graphite-based anodes and in the years to come we expect to see increase of silicon share in anode, but in combination with graphite, while 100% silicon anodes will take longer time to enter the mass market,” he added.

Saudi state oil giant Aramco reported a 15.4% drop in net profit in the third-quarter on the back of “lower crude oil prices and weakening refining margins,” but maintained a 31.05 billion dividend.

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Marqeta shares tumbled more than 30% in extended trading on Monday after the company issued weaker-than-expected guidance for the fourth quarter.

Here’s how the company did compared with Wall Street estimates, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:

• Loss per share: 6 cents, adjusted vs. 5 cents expected
• Revenue: $128 million vs. $128.1 million expected

While third-quarter results showed a slight disappointment on the top and bottom lines, Marqeta’s forecast for the current period was more concerning.

The payment processing firm said revenue in the fourth quarter will increase 10% to 12% from a year earlier. Analysts were looking for growth of over 17%, according to LSEG.

Marqeta, which primarily functions as a card-issuing platform, attributed the guidance miss to “heightened scrutiny of the banking environment and specific customer program changes.” The company has been struggling for a while, and its stock is now down more than 80% from its peak in 2021, the year it went public. The stock was down 15% for the year prior to the report.

Total processing volume of $74 billion was up more than 30% from a year earlier. Net revenue and gross profit were up 18% and 24%, respectively.

Marqeta’s digital commerce business sells payment technology designed to detect potential fraud and ensure that money is properly routed. It also issues customized physical cards that look like a credit or debit card that can be used for point-of-sale purchases.

The company has been trying to break into the buy-now, pay later business with a recently launched product called Marqeta Flex. The service brings BNPL from lenders like Affirm or Klarna to any credit card wherever Mastercard and Visa are accepted.

“It’s an orchestration layer, but it’s tied to issuing and processing and disputes and chargebacks,” CEO Simon Khalaf told CNBC at Money2020 in Las Vegas last week. “So it is not actually a Wild West in BNPL. It is actually very well established. And there is a reason why a lot of people are jumping to it.”

WATCH: Marqeta CEO on Q2 earnings

Technology companies’ push to directly power artificial intelligence with nuclear plants hit a major roadblock, after a federal regulator rejected a request to increase power for an Amazon data center.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Friday rejected a request to increase the amount of power the Susquehanna nuclear plant in Pennsylvania can dispatch to an Amazon data center campus.

Independent power producer Talen Energy in March sold the data center campus to Amazon for $650 million, which would be powered by the nuclear plant in a first-of-its-kind deal.

Talen’s stock fell more than 9% in premarket trading on FERC’s denial order. Constellation Energy and Vistra Corp. tumbled nearly 8% and more than 3%, respectively, in sympathy. Investors were expecting Constellation and Vistra to announce similar deals at some point.

The grid operator PJM Interconnection and the Susquehanna plant, which Talen owns, had filed a request to increase the amount of power dispatched to the Amazon data center from 300 megawatts currently to 480 megawatts.

The arrangement, called co-location by the power industry, “could have huge ramifications for both grid reliability and consumer costs,” said FERC Commissioner Mark Christie in his opinion backing the order.

Talen said FERC’s decision will have a “chilling effect on economic development in states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New Jersey” in a statement Monday. The power company said it is evaluating its options with a “focus on commercial solutions.”

The Amazon data center campus can still use 300 megawatts of power from the Susquehanna nuclear plant, according to Talen. The company said the deal is “is just and reasonable and in the best interest of consumers.”

The FERC decision does not impact Constellation’s plans to restart the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in 2028 through a power purchase agreement with Microsoft. Three Mile Island will dispatch power to the electric grid, rather than directly power Microsoft’s data centers.

But Constellation and Vistra have expressed interest in striking deals with tech companies that are similar to the agreement between Talen and Amazon.

Data centers that power AI and cloud computing are consuming growing amounts of electricity. Utilities are scrambling to find ways to power the growing electric load. Tech companies are increasingly turning to nuclear power because it is reliable and does not emit carbon dioxide emissions.

Vistra and Constellation are two of the best performing stocks in the S&P500 this year, as investors bet on a potential windfall from the tech sector’s growing energy needs.

Vistra’s stock has more than tripled this year, outpacing even Nvidia to become the best performing stock in the market. Constellation has more than doubled and is the fourth best stock in the S&P500 this year.

The head of oil producer alliance OPEC brushed off forecasts of dwindling crude demand in the coming year, saying there was too much pessimism in the market — despite the group extending production cuts just one day prior in an attempt to shore up prices amid subdued global consumption.

“Well, for OPEC, we have demand growth this year at 1.9 million barrels a day,” OPEC Secretary-General Haitham Al Ghais told CNBC’s Dan Murphy Monday at the Adipec energy conference in Abu Dhabi.

“Now some people might say this is on the high side, but other independent analysts, researchers in the market have it at similar levels,” he said. “Some have it at [what] we believe [are] very low levels. We’re still quite robust on demand.”

“I think there’s a bit too much doom and gloom and pessimism in terms of the demand outlook by some corners in the market, in terms of analysts and research, but we believe, still, our numbers are in line with many other independents,” Al Ghais said.

The Vienna-based oil producer group in mid-October downwardly revised its projections for oil demand growth in the near-term, forecasting growth of 1.93 million barrels a day this year and 1.64 million barrels a day in 2025. This compared to previous forecasts of 2.03 million and 1.74 million barrels a day, respectively.

While the outlook figure was trimmed, it’s still dramatically higher than that of the Paris-based International Energy Agency, which sees global oil demand increasing by roughly 900,000 barrels per day this year and close to 1 million barrels per day in 2025.

“We have lowered down our demand numbers, to be fair, in the last couple of months, by about 100,000 to 200,000 barrels a day,” Al Ghais said. “Nevertheless, we remain at 1.9 [million] and this is higher than the historical average, the pre-pandemic and even the post-pandemic recovery rate, which was around 1.2 million barrels per day.”

The forecasts come amid a slowing Chinese economy, which has significantly hit oil demand and abundant global supply. China is the world’s largest crude importer and the second-largest crude consumer, after the United States.

When asked about concerns over China’s economic trajectory, the OPEC chief replied: “We have China growing at 0.6 million barrels a day this year … I think the outliers who are looking at China growing at 0.1 [million barrels a day] or hardly any growth, are the outliers. We are not the outliers.”

He added that the group is “seeing some very positive numbers coming out of the U.S. economy” and that it sees “good signs in the petrochemical industry, aviation sector.”

Numerous economists expect China’s economic growth to remain relatively weak in 2025 despite recent stimulus measures implemented by Beijing. The measures announced in late September failed to elicit a strong reaction from markets, while slowed growth since the Covid-19 pandemic and increasing adoption of electric vehicles has slashed oil demand in the world’s second-largest economy.

The comments came just one day after OPEC+ member countries agreed to delay a planned December output increase by one month, causing U.S. crude futures to jump over 2%. West Texas Intermediate was up 2.24% to $71.73 per barrel and international benchmark Brent crude rose 2.17% to $75.27 by 12 p.m. in London.

“This is not the first time we delayed the increase, which is supposed to be phased in gradually … This is just a continuation of our policy of making sure that we’re very attentive to the market,” Al Ghais said, adding that there is more to be seen and deliberated before the next ministerial meeting on Dec. 1.

“This is nothing unusual that has not been, let’s say, part of the modus operandi of OPEC+ since our agreement has been in place,” he said.

OPEC+, which consists of OPEC member states and several producer countries outside the organization, has implemented a series of cuts and extensions of them since late 2022 amid rising supply around the world in an effort to shore up the market.