The cobalt market always struck me as people trying to be too clever for their own good. The initial investment rush was in lithium, so cobalt became the "clever" investment. "You're just investing because lithium is in the name, but you also need the cobalt for any decent chemistry, dummy!" Except, of course, lithium is fundamental to any li-ion, while cobalt isn't, and it's been obvious for a while that everyone's been working at reducing or eliminating it without sacrificing safety or performance.
You can of course also reduce lithium content in li-ion batteries, and that may be the next big battleground, but there's not as much improvement. You can reduce the fraction of inert lithium per cell which doesn't take part in reactions, but a solid majority of lithium in li-ions today is active. Yes, there's alternative ions to lithium - such as sodium-ion - but they're an entirely new tech which requires reinventing pretty much everything (same story as with solid state cells). Sodium ions are larger than lithium ions so you can't use the same membranes, they don't intercalate the same in traditional anode and cathode materials, etc. And solid-state li-ion or Li-S might be the successor to li-ion rather than na-ion. Basically, lithium has always been a much safer bet than cobalt.
Not that cobalt prices are cheap, mind you. They're just not as insane
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