TAIPEI, July 21, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Ultra-high-power cell pioneer Molicel showcased its technological leadership at Advanced Automotive Battery Conference (AABC) Europe 2026, revealing the leading INR-21700-P70X within its PX series. Engineered to bridge the gap between lithium-ion batteries and supercapacitors, this next-generation cell sets a new automotive benchmark by delivering an extraordinary 7000 mAh capacity, a staggering 340 Wh/kg energy density, and an elite 30C high-rate continuous discharge capability.
This major tactical realignment sweeps through the global auto industry as BEV growth cools. In its 2026 outlook, the International Energy Agency (IEA) highlights this shift, noting that manufacturers are actively prioritizing hybrids. In response, a massive surge in hybrid demand is redefining key regions: in the United States, hybrids neared 20% of new vehicle sales volume by late 2025 according to CNBC, while in Europe, they captured a 24% market share based on International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) data. Concurrently, the Asia-Pacific region asserted its market dominance, capturing 51.67% of the global hybrid vehicle market value across all segments, including mild, full, and plug-in hybrids. The multi-regional momentum is propelling the global hybrid vehicle market from USD 335.21 billion in 2026 to USD 570.78 billion by 2034.
This market shift has profoundly altered battery requirements. Next-generation hybrids demand an unprecedented synergy of sustained energy and explosive power—a profile Molicel delivers by breaking the traditional trade-off between power and density. With a 900W peak power duration of 5 seconds, the INR-21700-P70X enables immediate current delivery during sudden overtaking maneuvers and instant power absorption during heavy regenerative braking. Furthermore, the cell achieves an unprecedented power switching time of under 200 microseconds when ramping up to high-power output. This response speed effectively mirrors a supercapacitor, allowing the vehicle to seamlessly handle high-frequency power pulses without power fading.
"The global automotive landscape is undergoing a profound diversification, where the demand for immediate, high-frequency burst power has become paramount," said Casey Shiue, President of Molicel. "Our next-generation PX series isn't just an evolutionary upgrade; by blending supercapacitor-like responsiveness with the high energy density of lithium-ion, we are redefining what hybrid powertrains can achieve in terms of raw power, safety, and lifespan."
By passing the ultra-stringent UL9540A thermal runaway evaluation—the definitive international safety benchmark for energy storage systems and critical power infrastructure—Molicel sets a new safety benchmark. Through advanced single-crystal technology, the cell slashes exothermal heat release by nearly 50% compared to conventional poly-crystal materials. Crucially, during brutal abuse testing, instead of triggering a simultaneous, catastrophic blowout, Molicel's cells merely smoke, significantly delaying and isolating thermal spread. This tactical containment delivers a premier level of defense valued not only by mission-critical data center BBUs, but now serving as an unprecedented safety guarantee for automakers designing next-generation HEVs.
Furthermore, unlike BEVs that undergo deep daily cycles, hybrids subject batteries to hundreds of thousands of rapid, shallow fluctuations. In testing mimicking this environment under a supercapacitor profile, Molicel's PX series retained an astonishing 96% capacity after 1,000,000 cycles(+10C for 10s / -2C for 110s, cut-off temp. 83°C). This extreme durability ensures the battery powertrain outlives the vehicle itself, eliminating automaker warranty anxieties.
By combining conventional lithium-ion energy density with the microsecond responsiveness, low heat, and million-cycle life of a supercapacitor under high-rate pulse conditions, Molicel stands as the premier technology enabler for the global hybrid transition.
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Molicel Capitalizes on Global Hybrid Surge, Unveiling Next-Gen Cell Technology
As Mistral is expanding its AI compute capacity in Europe, the companies are expanding their strategic partnership with Microsoft's commitment to leverage part of this capacity, bringing Mistral's frontier and efficient models across Microsoft's AI platform and giving customers flexible deployment options from cloud to fully disconnected environments
- Scaling Europe's AI compute capacity: Microsoft and Mistral are announcing a new agreement to expand AI infrastructure in Europe. Microsoft will leverage Mistral's expanded Europe-based GPU infrastructure to increase capacity for AI development and to support the delivery of MSFT's cloud and AI services. This represents a multibillion dollar commitment from Microsoft and an important way for Microsoft customers to benefit from Mistral's scientific and compute innovations.
- Integrating Mistral models into Microsoft enterprise products: Mistral Medium 3.5 and OCR 4 are now available in Microsoft Foundry, and Mistral Medium 3.5 is now in Microsoft Copilot Studio. This brings the benefits of Mistral's frontier, efficient and multilingual models to Microsoft customers globally, allowing developers to build, customize and operate AI applications.
- Giving enterprises greater control over AI at scale: Azure enables organizations to deploy Mistral models across cloud, cloud-connected and fully disconnected environments, while maintaining control over data, operations and business continuity.
REDMOND, Wash., and PARIS, July 21, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Mistral on Tuesday announced a significant expansion of their strategic partnership to help enterprises and regulated industries adopt frontier AI with greater choice, control and operational consistency. The companies are bringing Mistral's frontier and efficient models across the Microsoft platform, including Microsoft Foundry, Copilot Studio and Azure, so customers can build and run AI across a spectrum of operating environments, from cloud-scale deployments to customer-controlled and fully disconnected operations.
Across Europe and other regulated markets, organizations want access to frontier AI while maintaining control over their data, operations and critical workloads. This partnership extends Microsoft's Sovereign Cloud approach by combining Mistral's frontier models with Microsoft's security, compliance and cloud-to-edge platform, giving customers greater choice in how and where they deploy AI.
"Europe should have access to the world's most capable AI without compromising control over their data, operations or digital future," said Brad Smith, Vice Chair and President, Microsoft. "By bringing Mistral's frontier European models into our sovereign cloud portfolio and enabling them across public cloud, cloud-connected and fully disconnected environments, we are honoring the European Digital Commitments we made and giving customers a trusted foundation for AI they can operate on their own terms."
"Our mission has always been to put frontier AI in the hands of every organization while keeping them in control of their technology," said Arthur Mensch, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Mistral. "With Microsoft as our partner, our models reach enterprises and public institutions at global scale — delivered through a platform trusted for the most demanding, regulated workloads and available everywhere our customers operate."
Europe's AI future: expanded GPU capacity
Underpinning the partnership is a new multibillion-dollar agreement focused on expanding AI infrastructure in Europe. Mistral is adding its GPU capacity, drawing on thousands of the latest NVIDIA Vera Rubin GPUs to increase AI compute availability for customers and provide a shared platform for training, inference and large-scale deployment.
The agreement strengthens Europe's AI infrastructure while helping Microsoft meet growing demand for cloud and AI services. Consistent with Microsoft's flexible approach to global infrastructure, which combines its own datacenters, leased facilities and strategic collaborations with third-party providers, it expands Microsoft's capacity footprint in Europe and supports the European Digital Commitments announced in 2025.
"Agentic AI is driving unprecedented demand for high-performance, energy-efficient AI infrastructure," said Ian Buck, Vice President of Hyperscale and High-Performance Computing, NVIDIA. "By deploying NVIDIA Vera Rubin systems at scale, Mistral and Microsoft will give customers the computing foundation they need to build and run the next generation of AI across Europe and beyond."
Frontier AI, enterprise ready: Mistral models in Microsoft Foundry and Copilot Studio
At the platform layer, Mistral's latest Medium 3.5 and OCR 4 models are now available in Microsoft Foundry, giving developers access to frontier models within a consistent environment for building, customizing and deploying AI applications. Mistral Medium 3.5 brings an open-weight model into a managed Azure environment, enabling developers and enterprises to build, customize and deploy AI applications with control, sovereign deployment options, and predictable, cost-efficient scaling. OCR 4 supports structured document-processing pipelines and agentic workflows, and both models can be applied across agentic applications, automation and domain-specific solutions using tools and workflows already established across the Foundry platform.
At the application layer, the companies brought Mistral's Medium 3.5 model to Copilot Studio, combining model flexibility with enterprise-grade governance, empowering teams to choose the best model for a given scenario while maintaining control over how and where data is processed.
One deployment experience across any environment: Microsoft Foundry and Foundry Local
Organizations can develop AI applications using the same models, tools, APIs and workflows across Microsoft Foundry and Foundry Local. This gives teams a consistent way to build, customize and operate AI applications regardless of where those applications ultimately run.
Microsoft Foundry provides the development platform for discovering, building and deploying models and agents in the cloud. Foundry Local extends that development and runtime experience to Azure Local, so organizations can bring AI closer to their data, users and operational environments. Together, they help reduce the need to redesign applications for each deployment scenario while giving customers more flexibility in how they meet sovereignty, latency and resilience requirements.
Flexible deployment with a common operating model: Azure and Azure Local
Organizations increasingly need different levels of operational control depending on workload sensitivity, regulatory obligations and mission requirements. Azure and Azure Local provide a common platform that supports AI deployments across a spectrum of operating environments:
- Cloud: Azure-hosted deployments for cloud scale, agility and access to the latest platform innovation.
- Cloud-connected: Customer-controlled Azure Local environments that remain connected to Azure services and operations when needed.
- Fully disconnected: Azure Local deployments that can operate independently of external connectivity for highly sensitive, constrained or mission-critical environments.
Across these operating models, customers can use Mistral models with a consistent platform and operational approach. This helps regulated organizations avoid a fragmented AI architecture while supporting the level of control, resilience and connectivity their workloads require.
For regulated industries where strategic autonomy is required, this offers concrete advantages. These customers can apply AI to sensitive workflows while aligning data, operations and access controls to their specific requirements. Critical infrastructure providers can maintain AI capabilities where resilience and service continuity are essential. Manufacturing and industrial organizations can analyze production, quality and operational data locally where latency, IP protection, export controls, cybersecurity and supply-chain resilience can shape deployment requirements. Healthcare organizations can support AI-enabled workflows where privacy, data residency, clinical continuity and regulated data handling are foundational requirements.
What this enables for our customers
As part of the expanded relationship, the companies are aligning on a joint go-to-market plan and will pursue enterprise opportunities together across Europe and globally. Mistral and Microsoft are also expanding the partnership to accelerate customer adoption, by funding PoCs, offering Azure credits, and leading workshops to drive AI innovation with customers.
Organizations in financial services, manufacturing, healthcare and other regulated sectors are running AI in settings where control and resilience are mandatory. With this partnership, they can build AI applications in Microsoft Foundry and run them in Azure or on Azure Local, using Mistral models in cloud, cloud-connected and fully disconnected operating environments.
Microsoft and Mistral will continue working to serve customers as we innovate across the models, development experience, development platform and European AI infrastructure that make this possible.
Learn more
About Mistral
Mistral is a pioneer company in generative artificial intelligence, empowering the world with the tools to build and benefit from the most transformative technology of our time. The company democratizes AI through high-performance, optimized, and cutting-edge open-source models, products and solutions as well as end-to-end infrastructure with Mistral Compute. Headquartered in France and independent, Mistral defends a decentralized and transparent approach to technology, with a strong global presence in the United States, United Kingdom, and Singapore. Learn more at www.mistral.ai
About Microsoft
Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT" @microsoft) creates platforms and tools powered by AI to deliver innovative solutions that meet the evolving needs of our customers. The technology company is committed to making AI available broadly and doing so responsibly, with a mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
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Microsoft and Mistral expand strategic partnership to give enterprises and regulated industries frontier AI they can control
