NIO Capital's Picks

 

NIO Capital's Managing Partner Wins ChinaVenture Award for Second Consecutive Year

 

Ian Zhu, NIO Capital's managing partner, was featured on the latest list of China's top 100 venture capitalists, an annual ranking released by investment consulting firm ChinaVenture. It's the second consecutive year that Zhu has won the honor. Following strict industry standards, these rankings are made based on the development of the primary market.

 

Portfolio Spotlight

 

CATL and Ronbay Technology Honored by Forbes China

 

EV battery maker CATL and lithium battery cathode materials manufacturer Ronbay Technology have been ranked in Forbes China's latest list of top 50 Chinese innovative companies for their continuous innovation and industry-leading technologies in the new energy sector. The ranking was first released five years ago. CATL has featured on the list every year, while Ronbay Technology has done for two consecutive years. Meanwhile, Robin Zeng, founder and chairman of CATL, and You Sang Yul, president of Ronbay Technology, entered Forbes China's ranking of 2022 China's Best CEOs.

 

Five of NIO Capital's Portfolio Companies Named in the List of KPMG China's Leading Autotech 50 Fifth Edition

 

Battery swap services provider Aulton New Energy, digital energy solutions provider NewLink, autonomous driving technology company Pony.ai, autonomous trucking startup Inceptio Technology, and autonomous truck maker TrunkTech have featured in the fifth edition of KPMG China's Leading Autotech 50 list. Aulton New Energy, NewLink, Pony.ai, and Inceptio Technology have entered the list of China's leading autotech innovators for years, while it's the first time for TrunkTech to be named as one of China emerging autotech innovators.

 

Automobiles and Logistics

 

Innovusion Contributes to the Ecosystem Construction of Smart Road OS

 

Global supplier of image-grade LiDAR Innovusion has become one of the first companies to co-build the equipment ecology for Smart Road OS, the world's first open-source intelligent connected roadside unit operating system.

Smart Road OS is a complete software and service open system, consisting of middleware layer, hardware abstraction layer and kernel layer. The operating system was jointly launched at the beginning of this month by China's leading search engine Baidu, China Society of Automotive Engineers, the Institute for AI Industry Research of Tsinghua University, Beijing Che Wang Technology Development Co., Ltd., and others.

Meanwhile, Innovusion released its latest offering Falcon AI, a highly integrated next-generation AI LiDAR. The product will be used in the roadside solutions of Apollo, Baidu's autonomous driving platform.

 

Momenta Participates in SAIC Mobility's Series B Round of Funding to Jointly Scale Robotaxi

 

L4 autonomous driving solution provider Momenta participated in the Series B round of financing of SAIC Mobility, Chinese automaker SAIC's ride-hailing service platform, increasing SAIC Mobility's value to US$ 1 billion, making it a unicorn. The two parties have been developing and deploying data-driven solutions using Momenta's "Flywheel L4" technology to scale safe and efficient autonomous driving in China. The two companies will jointly build a robotaxi ecology.

 

Pony.ai Joins Hands with Geely's Ride-hailing Unit Cao Cao Mobility to Provide Robotaxi Service

 

Autonomous driving technology company Pony.ai started offering its robotaxi service, PonyPilot+, in Beijing on the platform of Chinese carmaker Geely's ride-hailing unit Cao Cao Mobility, promoting the large-scale application of robotaxi and allowing its autonomous driving technology to serve more people.

 

Energy

 

Aulton New Energy Sets Record in Battery Swaps

 

Battery swap services provider Aulton New Energy has completed 30 million battery swaps, setting a new record for the industry. Its service offerings have supported 4.3 billion kilometers of driving and contributed to 270,000 tons of carbon emission reductions, equivalent to planting 15,000 hectares of trees. To date, Aulton's battery swap stations support 30 models of 16 automakers. The company can provide battery swaps in 20 seconds and perform up to 1,000 services per station per day.

 

YKC Cooperates with Cao Cao Mobility; Partners with Li Auto to Provide Battery Charging Map Service

 

Chinese EV charging service provider YKC Charging partnered with Cao Cao Mobility to provide the latter with charging services. Through Cao Cao Mobility's platform, drivers can find 250,000 charging facilities offered by YKC and enjoy fast charging services.

YKC has also joined hands with new energy vehicle firm Li Auto to develop a charging map for Li Auto users. The collaboration helped Li Auto users to find charging poles quickly. The charging map has been available since August 13.

 

NaaS Cooperates with State Grid Distributed New Energy Technology and On Time

 

EV charging service provider NaaS Technology, a subsidiary of NewLink, a digital energy solutions provider, has partnered with State Grid Distributed New Energy Technology Co., Ltd., a charging and battery swap facilities provider, to offer one-stop services for the charging stations of the latter, including customer sourcing, operation, and maintenance, improving the efficiency of these near-zero carbon emissions stations.

NaaS will start offering a charging service on the driver-side app of On Time, an online car-hailing brand under the Chinese automobile enterprise GAC Group. This service is expected to go live in October.

 

Cutting-edge Technologies

 

Nreal Secures Investment from IICOMBINED

 

Chinese AR/MR technology developer Nreal has raised funds from IICOMBINED, the parent company of Korean sunglasses brand Gentle Monster. The capital will enable Nreal to accelerate its global expansion. So far, Nreal has cooperated with some global leading telecom operators to carve out a global distribution network for its AR glasses, such as Nreal X and Nreal Air, in Korea, Japan, Europe, America and other places. NIO Capital co-led the C round of financing of Nreal in September 2021.

 

Black Sesame Technologies Closes Series C+ Round of Financing; Becomes Smart Road OS' Partner

 

Autonomous driving chips developer Black Sesame Technologies completed the Series C+ round of financing, raising a total of over US$ 500 million together with its C round of financing. The company will use the capital to further improve the R&D and promote the commercialization of its core technologies and chips, accelerating the application of its mass-produced autonomous driving chips.

Meanwhile, it joined Smart Road OS, the world's first open-source intelligent connected roadside unit operating system launched this month, as one of the chip technology partners.

 

Biren Technology Releases BR100 GPU and Showcased at Hot Chips Conference

 

Shanghai-based semiconductor startup Biren Technology has released the BR100 series of general-purpose GPUs, the first in terms of computing power in China.

The BR100 has set a new computing power record in the world, with 16-digit floating point computing power going beyond 1000 TOPS, 8-digit fixed point computing power exceeding 2000 TOPS and single card peak computing power reaching the Peta Floating-Point Operations Per Second (PFLOPS) level.

The BR100 was showcased on the first day of the 34th Hot Chips conference, a global leading conference in the semiconductor industry, alongside NVIDIA's Hopper, AMD Instinct's MI200 Serious, and Intel's Ponte Vecchio.

 

Standard Robots Pilots Its Intelligent Maintenance Robots in Shanghai Metro Stations

 

Standard Robots, a leader in Autonomous Mobile Robot (AMR) technology, has been testing its intelligent maintenance robots in the metro stations in Shanghai. The robots will sound the alarm once a malfunctioning part is suspected and maintenance workers will recheck it. Intelligent maintenance robots are receiving increasing attention in the urban rail transport industry, and cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong have begun to pilot them.

 

ESG Initiatives

 

Dida Chuxing Set an Example by Reducing Carbon Emissions

 

The World Economic Forum and Oliver Wyman have jointly released a report on addressing China's climate change. Chinese carpool and taxi-hailing app Dida Chuxing was the only car-hailing platform to be cited in the report for reducing carbon emissions. The company has demonstrated the innovation and potential of Chinese mobility platforms in carbon reduction.

 

Ronbay Technology Named as One of the Best ESG Companies

 

The Chinese news agency Cailianshe and China Star Market, a platform providing news and information about China's Science and Technology Innovation Board (the STAR Market), have released a list honoring the outstanding innovative companies listed on the STAR Market, a new trading platform in the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) focusing on companies in high-tech and emerging sectors.

 

Only ten out of the 452 listed companies were honored as the best ESG companies, and Ronbay Technology was one of them. The company has made great achievements in ESG and showed its core competencies in contributing to carbon neutrality.