In a surprise move, oil-and-gas giant ExxonMobil announced the acquisition of a privately owned company that produces a key ingredient used in lithium-ion batteries, The New York Times reported.
The purchase offered an indication that, despite being the most valuable oil company in the U.S. and the world's largest producer of resins used in single-use plastics, the $470-billion company might be hedging its bets by investing in cleaner technologies viewed by many as the future of energy production and storage.
"Like in any market, there are fluctuations in the near term," Dave Andrew, ExxonMobil's vice president of new market development, told the Times. "But we fundamentally see the demand for batteries and electric vehicles and, increasingly, in the large-scale energy storage solutions increasing over the longer term."
ExxonMobil announced it had acquired Chicago-based Superior Graphite, a producer of synthetic graphite, for an undisclosed price, according to the Times.
Graphite is an essential ingredient in lithium-ion batteries, which are used to power everything from electric vehicles to smartphones. However, industry experts have increasingly expressed concern over China's current stranglehold on graphite production, with the country accounting for 82% of global graphite output in 2024, according to Mining Technology.
"We have good indications that what we're bringing to the market in terms of differentiated material and scalable investments is something that, quite frankly, the U.S. domestic supply chain is looking for," Andrew told the Times.
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Still, with the U.S. federal government significantly rolling back incentives for renewable-energy production and electric vehicles, the move came at an interesting time for the oil-and-gas giant, suggesting that the company viewed the current headwinds facing renewable energy and EVs as only temporary.
And in any case, it simply makes sense for a business operating in a declining industry, even if declining more slowly than many might hope to rein in pollution, to diversify its portfolio of business interests to become more future-proof.
The need for energy isn't going anywhere, of course, and it's really not that complicated for an energy company specializing in one fuel source to start putting some of its eggs in another energy basket. Grid energy providers such as NextEra, Constellation, and Duke Energy have done the same for years. The stock of each company has been in good shape, with Contellation in particular seeing 31.9% growth in 2025 and a whopping 611% growth since going public in 2022.
In addition to lithium-ion batteries being used in many everyday products, batteries also play an important role in storing the energy produced by renewable sources like solar and wind.
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Absolutely 👍 The purchase was not ExxonMobil's first foray into the materials used in lithium-ion batteries. The company also has invested in lithium production at a facility in southwest Arkansas, per The New York Times.
In fact, as the Times pointed out, a scientist working for Exxon in the 1970s developed the world's first functioning lithium-ion battery, an achievement for which the researcher later shared a Nobel Prize. However, Exxon chose not to pursue the technology at the time due to what it viewed as limited market potential.
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