Tencent Invests in Automobile Manufacturer Founded by Roborock CEO
36Kr reported on Monday that many insiders revealed that “Luoke Automobile”, the automobile project of Chang Jing, founder and CEO of Roborock, had completed a financing round of $ 100 million at the end of 2021. This round was led by Tencent and followed by Sequoia Capital.
After Tencent invested in Luoke Automobile, several people from NIO Capital and Meituan tried to contact the new automobile maker to discuss investment matters, but they were all rejected.
According to the source, “Tencent‘s investment in this round of financing exceeds $50 million”. At present, Luoke Automobile is seeking a new round of financing worth $2 billion.
Luoke Automobile is an automobile manufacturing project started by Chang Jing, founder of Roborock, at the end of 2020. The positioning of Luoke Automobile’s first car is an off-road model benchmarked against the Mercedes-Benz G Series, and with an aim to exceed 1,000 kilometers on a single battery charge. At present, Luoke Automobile is headquartered in Shanghai, and Chang Jing is the Chairman of the company. Yan Feng, former CTO of WM Motor, has joined the company as CEO.
Roborock, a room sweeping robot company founded by Chang Jing, is a star project in Xiaomi‘s ecological chain. The company once hit a market value of nearly 100 billion yuan on the Shanghai Sci-Tech Innovation Board (STAR Market). Investors who had intended to invest in Luoke Automobile said that Chang Jing was no longer involved in the daily operations of Roborock, and that he spent most of his time on automobile products.
SEE ALSO: Overseas Subsidiary of Chinese EV Firm NIO May Start Selling EVs in U.S.
At present, NIO, Li Auto, XPeng and other new vehicle manufacturers are developing rapidly, but are facing pressure from new contenders, such as smartphone giant Xiaomi, who has just entered the sector. Lei Jun, founder of Xiaomi, is currently re-adjusting his business structure and is handing over the smartphone business to Lu Weibing, President of Xiaomi, and focusing more on the company’s automobile projects.
