Morgan Stanley: Salt Is the New Oil, Sodium-Ion Batteries Take Off

Morgan Stanley is telling clients that the next commodity story is not lithium or copper. It is salt.

The bank argues sodium-ion batteries are on the verge of scaling into a major slice of the global battery market, and it is framing the shift as the beginning of a new energy era tied directly to AI power demand.

The call

Analyst Jack Lu and his team at the bank predict sodium-ion batteries will account for 20% of total battery deployment market share by 2030 and 37% in 2035. Currently, his team expects it to make up around 2% of the market next year.

Lu characterized the emerging sodium-ion battery era as the “New Oil Age” in a note to clients.

The AI angle

The tie-in with AI is the part traders should pay attention to. “In an AI-driven, power-intensive world, sodium-ion batteries address the critical bottleneck where energy security meets AI,” Lu wrote.

To power this growth, Lu said to expect around $800 billion in new investments by 2035. That is the kind of capex cycle that tends to reshape supplier ecosystems well before end demand shows up in earnings.

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Why sodium over lithium

The pitch is cost and availability. Sodium-ion batteries offer a 30 to 40 percent cost advantage over LFP (lithium iron phosphate) batteries and also deliver better performance in cold climates.

Lithium, by contrast, is scarce, expensive and its extraction is concentrated in just a few countries. Sodium batteries can be between 20% and 30% cheaper to manufacture. The trade-off is lower energy density, which is why the near-term use case skews toward grid storage and lower-cost EVs rather than premium range vehicles.

Who wins

Morgan Stanley is not calling for a startup free-for-all. Lu said to expect industry winners to take more in the emerging space. These incumbents can leverage existing customer relationships, global capacity footprints, and R and D depth to rapidly capture the low-end market while simultaneously pushing sodium-ion batteries into higher-value applications.

Translation: the established battery names get first dibs on the new chemistry, not the speculative pure-plays.

Options market and stocks to watch

A few names worth having on the radar as this thesis gains traction:

MS: Watch for follow-on research notes and any client positioning shifts tied to the bank pushing the sodium-ion thesis.

TSLA: Watch for any commentary on sodium-ion adoption for storage products like Megapack, where cost matters more than energy density.

ALB: Watch for pressure on lithium names if sodium-ion adoption accelerates faster than consensus.

BYDDY: Watch as a Chinese incumbent already positioned in sodium-ion deployment.

CMP: Watch salt and specialty chemical names for any read-through on upstream sodium demand.

For related coverage on battery chemistry shifts and commodity flows, see other news on Unusual Whales.

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