NIO Capital’s Picks

 

NIO Capital Launches New Website

 

NIO Capital has upgraded its official website as we embrace the sixth year of development to show a more comprehensive image to stakeholders. We introduce the sectors for investment, our vision and values in a simple manner. The new website provides more detailed information on NIO Capital’s portfolio companies, ESG trends and insights. You can visit our new website here. 

 

NIO Capital Invests in RHINO’s Angel+ Round

 

Semiconductor startup RHINO closed its Angel + financing round, raising hundreds of millions of yuan from investors, including NIO Capital, which co-led its angel round last year.

Founded in 2020 and dedicated to developing computing platforms for autonomous driving vehicles, RHINO will deploy fresh funds for development and mass production of chips to boost the adoption of high-level assisted driving.

 

NIO Capital Invests in Newrizon’s Series B+ round

 

NIO Capital invested over RMB 100 million in fully electric truck and van producer Newrizon in its Series B+ financing round. The proceeds will be used on light truck and van R&D, mass production and marketing, and updating its core technologies powering its battery, motor and electric systems.

 

NIO Capital Participates in PCG Power’s RMB 500 Mn Financing

 

PCG Power, a power management solution provider, secured RMB 500 million from investors; NIO Capital participated in the deal.

Incubated by Poly Capital and Country Garden Venture Capital in June 2022, the company aims to be the largest power management service provider for industrial complexes or neighborhoods. PCG Power plans to develop distributed photovoltaic power, energy storage, charging piles, energy management and carbon management, and build 8–10 gigawatt assets in five years.

 

Leading ESG Initiatives

 

NIO Capital Launches ‘Mission Blue’ ESG Initiative

 

NIO Capital officially launched “Mission Blue” ESG Initiative in February 2023. The first offsite event “Ocean Plogging”, a public action for beach clean-up, took place in Sanya, Hainan province, in cooperation with Blue Ribbon Ocean Conservation Association. The move marked a milestone in NIO Capital’s ESG practice in that it expanded the varieties of our ESG practices.

Mission Blue, the brand name of NIO Capital’s ESG initiative, shows the firm’s commitment to environmental protection and expectation for a better world. The brand name, on the one hand, echoes NIO’s slogan — Blue Sky Coming; On the other hand, we hope the team will raise environmental awareness and contribute to a sustainable future.

We made a short video documenting the beach clean-up acativity, and more importantly, articulated why we launched this initiative, click here to watch the video.

 

Portfolio Spotlight

 

NIO Capital Portfolio Companies Named as Emerging Unicorns by Forbes China

 

Six of NIO Capital’s portfolio companies have been recognized as emerging unicorns in 2022 by Forbes China. They are AR glass producer Nreal, autonomous driving chip developer Black Sesame Technologies, lithium battery material supplier Rongtong Gaoke, solid-state battery manufacturer Welion, lithium battery integration technology provider Sunwoda EVB and DPU developer Jaguar Microsystems.

 

NIO Capital Portfolio Companies Win Place in China Venture Top 100 Companies List

 

Semiconductor startup CIX Technology, solid-state battery manufacturer Welion, and two autonomous truck developers Inceptio Technology and TrunkTech have been included in the China Venture’s Top 100 Companies Ranking list.

 

Automobiles and Logistics

 

Lotus Tech to Get Listed on NASDAQ via SPAC

 

Lotus Tech, a luxury EV maker, has made a deal to be merged with L Catterton Asia Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). When the deal is closed, Lotus Tech will be listed on NASDAQ under the ticker “LOT”.

 

Inceptio Delivers Autonomous Driving Trucks to Kuayue-Express

 

Autonomous truck developer Inceptio Technology has delivered the first batch of trucks to Kuayue-Express as the logistics company leverages its vehicles to carry out business. As of date, trucks using Inceptio’s Xuanyuan autonomous driving system have covered about 30 million kilometers of open roads.

 

Forty Self-driving Electric Mining Trucks co-developed by Eacon to Start Operation

 

YTK90E, a fully electric self-driving mining truck co-developed by Yutong KYC and autonomous driving firm Eacon, has arrived at a mine in Zoucheng, Shandong province, to start working. A total of 40 such unmanned trucks will be delivered to the mine, called Honghe Baili Fushan, to upload, transport and offload 90 million tons of mining materials around the clock.

 

Energy

 

AlphaESS-supported Renewable Energy Project Connects to Grid in Hebei

 

Renewable energy storage solution provider AlphaESS handed over eight wind power storage containers and some solar panels to a project in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province. These facilities can store and discharge 12 million kWh of electricity annually, effectively increasing the final usage rate of solar power.

 

Deep Technology

 

Innovusion Takes the Largest LiDAR Passenger Vehicle Market Share in China, Report Says

 

Innovusion took a 36.2% market share as a passenger car LiDAR pre-installation supplier in China, becoming the largest player in the industry, according to GGAI-AV, an intelligent vehicle-focused think tank.

 

CIX Technology Teams up with Longsys Electronics to Commercialize Chip Products

 

Semiconductor firm CIX Technology has signed a framework agreement with Shenzhen Longsys Electronics Co., Ltd. to commercialize edge-side cloud computing solutions adopting ARM architecture chips. The two companies will try to make breakthroughs in CPU platform and storage facilities.

CIX is dedicated to R&D of CPU core, SoC (system on a chip) and full-stack software development, as well as system design, while Longsys Electronics has formed key competitiveness in memory firmware algorithm development, memory chip testing and packaging design.

 

Black Sesame Technologies to Mass Produce Anti-collision System

 

Semiconductor firm Black Sesame Technology will start mass producing an in-car anti-collision system that can warn drivers of the height clearance of a pole, a bridge arch, or a tree branch for an unidentified domestic automaker, the first such company in the industry to reach this milestone. The system has been co-developed by Black Sesame and Smarter Eye, an image recognition solution provider.

 

NOLO’s Devices to Support Gesture Tracking

 

VR gadgets producer NOLO published a demo video to showcase its gesture-tracking technology. The video shows that the latest device NOLO SONIC 2 has achieved gesture synchronization between the real and the VR world. Gesture recognition is more natural and intuitive than handle control in VR. After accessing a specific game SDK, the gadget’s gesture recognition function will play a more critical role in improving the VR experience.

 

Whale Accredited by Singapore Authorities

 

Digital store operation solution provider Whale has been accredited by Info-Communications Media Development Authority of Singapore to be qualified to cooperate with large enterprises and organizations based in the city-state, marking a milestone in Whale’s global expansion. Founded in 2017, the company has served over 400 brands globally, including Unilever, Procter & Gamble, NIO, Midea, and Decathlon.

 

RHINO’s Co-authored Papers Accepted by Top Academic Conference

 

Two papers co-written by RHINO employees and Shanghai Jiaotong University researchers have been accepted by Design Automation Conference, a top-level academic conference in the design automation sector and one that has a wide influence in the international semiconductor industry.

These two papers are FLNA: An Energy-Efficient Point Cloud Feature Learning Accelerator with Dataflow Decoupling and COSA: Co-Operative Systolic Arrays for Multi-head Attention Mechanism in Neural Network using Hybrid Data Reuse and Fusion Methodologies.