SVOLT Energy Technology, a Chinese developer of electric vehicle (EV) batteries and energy storage solutions, has pocketed a total of 3.5 billion yuan ($540.8 million) in a Series A round of financing.
The new round was led by Bank of China Group Investment, a Hong Kong-incorporated direct investment arm of Bank of China (BOC), and private equity (PE) firm CMG-SDIC Fund Management.
The new financing will be used for the R&D of new technologies and the expansion of production capacity, said SVOLT’s chairman and president Yang Hongxin in a statement.
The firm will kickstart the fundraising work for its Series B round “the soonest possible,” said Yang, for investors who had wanted to put more capital in the current round. It targets to launch an initial public offering (IPO) in 2022.
Other investors including state-owned investment firm Beijing Financial Street Capital Operation Centre; Changzhou Venture Capital Group, a government-backed firm that serves small- and medium-sized tech firms; and Hangzhou-based ZJU Jiuzhi Investment Management.
China-focused venture capital (VC) firm IDG Capital; cross-broder investment platform Cathay Capital; and HT Capital, a PE unit of China’s Haitong Securities were also among investors in the deal.
The billion-yuan round is the second equity investment completed by SVOLT. The startup had secured 1 billion yuan in its initial financing round from CMG-SDIC Fund Management in April 2020. CMG-SDIC Fund Management picked up a 12.2% stake in SVOLT, giving it a valuation of 8.2 billion yuan.
Established in 2012 by Chinese automaker Great Wall Motor as its battery business unit, SVOLT was spun off from the parent firm in 2018 to become an independently operated company involved in the R&D of cobalt-free auto battery units, solid-state batteries, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered intelligent manufacturing, and more.
Headquartered in eastern China’s Wuxi City, SVOLT has over 3,100 employees worldwide including 1,400 R&D staff. It invested about 3 billion yuan in R&D last year, shows its website.