Xiamen Hithium Energy Storage Technology, a Chinese energy storage firm that is expanding in the US, Europe, and South Asia, has secured yet another big-sized funding round a few days after its plan of a domestic listing came to light.
Hithium has raised over 4.5 billion yuan ($622.2 million) in its Series C funding round to finance the expansion of production facilities, acquisition of advanced equipment, technological R&D, and new market exploration, the firm announced on Wednesday.
As its biggest venture financing to date, the Series C round saw Hithium rope in state capital investor Beijing Financial Street Capital Operation Group (BFS Capital) and China Life Private Equity Investment, an arm of China Life Insurance, as the lead investors.
The deal has a range of co-lead investors including the Bank of China subsidiary BOC Asset Management, CITIC Securities’ PE unit Goldstone Investment, CDH Investments’ tech-focused Dinghui Baifu, CMG-SDIC Capital, CICC Capital, and the China-US Green Fund.
Participating investors include Matrix Partners China, Hefei Industry Investment Holding Group, and CDI New Energy, the new energy arm of Beijing-based Capital Development Investment Fund, to name a few.
The new investment followed an agreement between Hithium and Huatai United Securities, under which the domestic investment bank will offer the firm with a pre-listing tutorial ahead of its planned initial public offering (IPO) on a stock exchange in mainland China. Hithium has yet to disclose its listing location and IPO size.
Hithium has become a darling of investors seeking the next champion across China’s booming eco-friendly industries including energy storage, electric vehicles, and climate solutions.
The firm, founded in 2019 to specialise in the R&D, production, and sales of lithium-ion energy storage batteries and related systems, achieved mass production for the first time in 2021. It targets to cross the 100GWh-annual-production threshold by 2024, before moving towards the delivery of 135GWh of energy storage batteries by 2025 with an expected total investment of $4.71 billion during the process.
Hithium co-founder and general manager Wang Pengcheng said the firm will continue its research into key technologies that will help advance energy storage batteries, with a focus on bringing down costs and enhancing product safety.
Prior to the Series C round, the firm closed over 2 billion yuan ($276.3 million) in a Series B round led by ABC International, the investment banking unit of the Agricultural Bank of China (ABC), in October 2022. Its Series B investors included Matrix Partners China, Dayone Capital, domestic metal mining business Chengtun Mining Group, and a few others.