Baidu invests $100 million in NIO to accelerate autonomous driving project

Recently, NIO completed a $100 million Series D financing round, with Baidu as the investor. However, it is not known what proportion of Baidu's shares in NIO is currently available.

It is understood that NIO was founded in November 2014. Similar to Tesla, making supercars is also a "dimensionality reduction attack" strategy, starting with the highest performance car and then moving down to easier cars. It is reported that its investment lineup is luxurious.

In June 2015, NIO received a 100 million yuan Series A investment from Hillhouse Capital, Tencent, JD.com, Bitauto and Shunwei Capital; in September 2015, it received a 500 million US dollar Series B financing from Sequoia China and Joy Capital; in June 2016, NIO received hundreds of millions of dollars in financing again from Temasek, TPG Growth, Hillhouse Capital and Lenovo Group.

NIO's previous six founding investors included Bitauto CEO Li Bin, Tencent Chairman and CEO Ma Huateng, JD.com CEO Liu Qiangdong, Autohome founder Li Xiang, Xiaomi founder Lei Jun and Hillhouse Capital founder Zhang Lei.

In June 2016, Tencent, Baidu and JD.com jointly invested in Bitauto, founded by Li Bin, with a total investment of US$150 million; in August 2016, Tencent, Baidu and JD.com invested in Yixin Finance, an independent subsidiary of Bitauto, with a total investment of US$550 million. Therefore, after the founders of Tencent and JD.com participated in the investment in NIO, founded by Li Bin, it is reasonable for Baidu to enter the market again.

Sources said that Baidu's investment in NIO will allow it to apply Baidu's driverless technology to NIO's products in the future.

Baidu's driverless car project started in 2013 and was led by Baidu Research Institute. Its core technology is "Baidu Car Brain", which includes four modules: high-precision maps, positioning, perception, intelligent decision-making and control. Among them, the high-precision maps collected and produced by Baidu independently record complete three-dimensional road information and can achieve vehicle positioning with centimeter-level accuracy. At the same time, Baidu's driverless car relies on the world's leading traffic scene object recognition technology and environmental perception technology to achieve high-precision vehicle detection and recognition, tracking, distance and speed estimation, road segmentation, and lane line detection, providing a basis for intelligent decision-making for autonomous driving.

According to Baidu's current progress and layout in autonomous driving, Baidu may serve as a technology provider for NIO in the future and apply its autonomous driving solutions to models launched by NIO.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.