XPENG Motors Gets Money from Huawei, Xiaomi, Foxconn for ‘Electric Auto 2.0’
XPENG has finished its A+ round financing and plans to announce B round financing in early 2018, XPENG Motors Chairman He Xiaopeng said in a Weibo post on December 15. Investment in this round of financing came from Xiaomi, Foxconn and IDG.
According to official sources, XPENG has undergone three rounds of financing, namely A0, A1 and A2. The A0 investment came from Alibaba Group and He Xiaopeng. The A1 round was financed by Granite Global Ventures, Morningside, IDG, Matrix Partners China, Shunwei Capital and Guangkong Zhongying Capital. The A2 round was financed by Xin Ding Capital, Kinzon Capital and Lightspeed.
SEE ALSO: First XPENG Car with License Plate Goes to Chairman He Xiaopeng
Guangzhou Chengxing Zhidong Automobile Technology is an entity operated by XPENG. Chengxing Zhidong added Hangzhou Alibaba Venture Capital Investment Company as its new shareholder, owning 10 percent of the shares.
Shareholders of Hangzhou Alibaba VC are Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma and Alibaba co-founder Xie Shihuang. Alibaba made a strategic investment in XPENG and Joseph Tsai, Alibaba‘s vice chairman, became a member of its board.
The previous three rounds of financing brought XPENG US $700 million. He Xiaopeng said he aims to raise US $5 billion over the next two years.
He Xiaopeng said he would complete five rounds of financing in a year. For XPENG, the goal is not a problem. Five rounds of financing per year would surpasses Mobike in terms of financing speed.
Alibaba said its capital injection into the new energy vehicle start-up was part of its overall investment in the automotive sector.
He Xiaopeng himself made additional investment in the A0 round and a number people from the Internet tech field participated in A+ round financing as individual investors. These included the founder and CEO of 58.com Yao Jinbo, founder of Dianping Zhang Tao and the founder and CEO of Liepin.com Dai Kebin.
Over the past six months, domestic Internet giants increasingly directed their attention and capital to Internet cars.
On November 8, Nextev announced a new round of more than $1 billion in financing, led by Tencent. Its first mass-produced all-electric ES8 will be available on December 16.
On December 5, Weltmeiser completed a new $1 billion financing round led by Baidu Capital and followed by Baidu Group. Weltmeiser unveiled its future product plan and its first mass-production car, the EX5, earlier this week. At present, the total financing of Weltmeiser automobile has exceeded 12 billion yuan, and it is preparing another round of financing.
Seven Seas VC, founded by Tencent‘s former CTO Xiong Minghua, had invested previously in Weltmeiser. Xiong joined Weltmeiser as vice chairman.
XPENG‘s cars attracted Alibaba and Xiaomi after it received a strategic investment of 2.2 billion yuan from UCAR in June.
He Xiaopeng said the 1.0 version of the car, which was released in October, would not be sold to the public on a large scale, with only about 1,000 units produced. Through test driving, XPENG could discover problems, continue to improve and complete a hardware iteration. The XPENG 2.0 version is already developed and will appear at the CES exhibition in the United States. It will be released on the market in 2018.
