NIO Capital, an investment firm founded by Chinese electric vehicle (EV) maker NIO, announced on Monday that it reached the final closing of a flagship fund at about $400 million to step up investments in energy, automobiles, and deep technology industries.
The new fund, named “Eve ONE Fund II,” received capital commitments from a diversified group of existing and new institutional investors, said NIO Capital in a statement. It primarily invests in early- and middle-stage startups in China.
Its limited partners (LPs) include sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies, multilateral financial institutions, funds of funds (FOFs), family offices, pension funds, and foundations from the US, Europe, Middle East, China, Southeast Asia, and Africa. A couple of new investors made their first forays into a China-focused strategy through the commitments.
Eve ONE Fund II nearly doubled the size of its predecessor fund “Eve ONE,” NIO Capital’s maiden US dollar fund that had held the final closing at over $200 million at the end of 2019.
“Our mission is to sustain and advance humankind via investing in innovations. We are dedicated to fostering a sustainable future with like-minded investors and visionary entrepreneurs,” said William Li, managing partner of NIO Capital, in the statement.
“Over the past five years, NIO Capital has become an institutionalised investment firm with the ability to integrate industry resources with financial goals. We see exciting opportunities at the crossover of auto, technology, and energy sectors,” said Ian Zhu, managing partner of NIO Capital.
Shanghai-based NIO Capital, whose portfolio companies include self-driving solutions provider Momenta and autonomous driving startup Pony.ai, makes environmental, social, and governance (ESG) sustainable investments with a focus on innovations in decarbonisation and digitalisation.
Founded in 2016, the firm has invested in companies such as battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd (CATL), self-driving truck developer Inceptio, ride-sharing firm Dida, digital energy infrastructure company Newlinks, and Innovusion, which delivers hybrid solid-state LiDAR systems for vehicle safety applications.
Alongside Eve ONE Fund II, NIO Capital said that it also held the first closing of the second RMB-denominated fund to invest in growth- and mature-stage businesses. The firm did not disclose the size of the first closing or the fundraising target.
The firm’s debut RMB fund, NIO New Energy Development Fund, was created in partnership with Asia-focused private equity (PE) firm Hillhouse Capital Group and Sequoia Capital with a plan to raise 10 billion yuan ($1.6 billion) in total.
NIO, which started trading its shares on the New York stock exchange (NYSE) in 2018 after raising $1 billion in its initial public offering (IPO), has sought a secondary listing outside of the US amid the looming risk of a delisting due to the heightened regulatory scrutiny.
It completed a secondary listing by way of introduction in Hong Kong earlier this month, while waiting for a listing on the Singapore Exchange (SGX) under the same mechanism that would allow the firm to list on the board without selling new shares or raising new capital. The maker of smart EVs delivered a total of 91,429 vehicles in 2021, up 109.1% year-over-year.