QuantumScape Opens Osprey Platform to License Solid-State Battery Tech

QuantumScape has pulled back the curtain on Osprey, an open platform for sulphide-based solid-state batteries that builds on its existing QSE architecture. The platform pairs the company's ceramic separator and its anode-free lithium-metal design with a solid cathode, and QuantumScape says the point is to open up new licensing and co-development deals for current customers while reaching developers of sulphide all-solid-state batteries. Automotive partners are already running development projects on it, with collaboration starting in the early stages of cell development.

The pitch lands on a sore spot. Sulphide electrolytes are popular across the battery industry for their high ionic conductivity and relatively simple processing, but QuantumScape argues they keep running into the same wall: the need for high applied pressure, poor cycle life and incompatibility with lithium metal. According to the company, those efforts have been fragmented and have all collided with the same fundamental limits of sulphides as separators.

The numbers QuantumScape is putting on the table: Osprey cells reportedly reached 1,000 full charge cycles with about 80% capacity retention, and charged from 10% to 80% in five minutes in initial testing. The company says that came under 1C/1C charge and discharge rates, cathode loading above 5 mAh/cm², 100% depth of discharge at room temperature and a pressure of one atmosphere. Cell-level energy density can reach roughly 1,100 Wh/L with high-loading cathodes, and compatibility has been shown with both QuantumScape's own solid cathodes and third-party ones.

CEO Siva Sivaram framed Osprey as the payoff of years of frontier R&D. He said the industry has invested heavily in sulphide-based batteries but keeps hitting the same fundamental limits, and that the data shows Osprey can address them — with the goal of making it the leading platform for solid-state battery development.

Mass production is still a way off. Automotive customers generally want larger prismatic cells with more capacity than the existing QSE-5 design, but the Osprey results come mainly from two-layer test cells. QuantumScape says those share the QSE-5 footprint, while bigger cells will likely need more layers and more area per layer. The production process has only been demonstrated on a laboratory scale so far.

QuantumScape doesn't plan to build cells at scale itself, instead pushing GWh-scale projects through licensing deals. The company finished installing key equipment for pilot production of QSE-5 cells in San Jose, California, at the end of 2025, and inaugurated the automated Eagle Line there in February 2026. It began shipping B1 samples of the QSE-5 in October 2025 without naming recipients. QSE-5, set to be its first commercial product, is a 5 Ah cell with over 844 Wh/l energy density, a 12.2-minute charge from 10% to 80% state of charge, and operation down to -30 degrees Celsius. Volkswagen is the main backer, Honda has been a listed development partner since mid-2025, and the joint programme with Volkswagen centres on the Ducati V21L motorcycle.