According to a list of unicorns designated by the Ministry of Science and Technology released on March 23, Weimar Ranked 18th with a valuation of $5 billion, tying with NiO as China’s most valued new energy vehicle companies. Later, the media revealed that the list was actually written by a private consultancy, and its credibility sparked controversy.
In February 2018, Shen Hui, founder of Weimar, revealed that Weimar had raised nearly 20 billion RMB.
Surprisingly, it was only two years after the company was officially established and one and a half years after the capital was introduced.
“When Shen mentioned the 20 billion yuan, he used the term ‘raising’, which is not the same as NiO saying it raised 2.2 billion dollars,” an authoritative source in the auto investment industry told AI Finance on condition of anonymity.
He explained further, the concept of Internet investment circles in the past to raise generally refers to the equity financing, but “entrepreneur” into the car after the Internet often like to, from the promised help bond financing of local government and in the future, and even sales promised after the tax return, is that she has already fell along with all the bags of money pool announced in advance, To get more resources and space, but these numbers are more futures.
Another person who participated in Internet car investment believes that although the above situation exists partly, it is also a kind of ability, but their own investment should be carefully screened, he lamented that the “unicorn” list swept the screen a few days ago, let this line of water more mixed.
He said, for example, although Jia Yuting was jokingly running faster than his own car, but Jia team opened a press conference in the industry is not cattle, this line sometimes opened a press conference can spend tens of millions, the car did not see the road, but forced case must be the highest. The above – mentioned personage claims to have become the invisible minority shareholder of an Internet car through the way of investing in funds.
“When you can’t see clearly, follow BAT’s big zhuang first.” This type of investment is increasingly common in the Internet car industry, where founders don’t like to have too many shareholders and talk too much, these people said. Second, they did not see too clearly on the first less investment, dozens of bets 100 or 200 million small-scale investors jointly set up a fund to follow the lead fund into.
In response to this, Weimar’s public relations director told AI Finance that the accumulated financing was indeed nearly 20 billion yuan, only the sum of equity financing and debt financing, excluding “the bond financing that local governments promised to help issue, the tax rebate promised after the future construction and even sales”. Meanwhile, weimar said that nearly 20 billion yuan of financing has been fully accounted.
Dark horse of new energy vehicle
In the field of Internet new energy vehicles, weimar’s team is more inclined to traditional industries.
According to the third-party information platform Tianyan, Weima Automobile Technology Co., Ltd. was registered in May 2012 with the legal person du Ligang, and is mainly engaged in the research and development of electric welding machines and motors for pure electric vehicles. In October 2015, the legal person was changed to Shen Hui, and the business scope was changed to the research and development and sales of new energy intelligent vehicles, etc., and now the well-known WeIMar automobile officially came out of its shell.
Shen Hui is the soul of Weima Automobile. Starting his own business at the age of 45, he has served as a senior executive in several multinational car companies in the past two decades. He works for Borgwarner, an industry recognized leader in automotive powertrain solutions. Fiat, a car manufacturer, is one of the world’s top ten car companies, with dozens of well-known brands such as Ferrari, Maserati and Jeep. While under Geely’s control, Mr. Shen was involved in buying Volvo’s car business, which has a 91-year history of making cars.
With years of industry accumulation and contacts, Shen hui attracted a group of people in the industry at the beginning of the establishment of Weimar in 2015, including former colleagues in the automotive industry and many people from Internet companies.
In August 2016, Weima Auto announced to obtain $1 billion round A financing, just 10 months after its establishment, Weima has also become A dark horse of new energy vehicles.
The craziest fundraising happened in December 2017. On December 5, WEimar announced a SERIES B financing of usd 1 billion, with Baidu Capital leading the investment, ameba Capital, SIG Haina Asia, Baidu Group and other co-investors. On December 22, B+ round of financing news was sold, the amount was not announced, the investors are Sequoia Capital China, Minmetals Investment, Tencent, China’s state-owned enterprise institutional Adjustment Fund. According to media reports, “people familiar with the matter said the financing amounted to billions of yuan”.
Baidu rarely invests more than 1 billion yuan in Internet vehicles, the investor said. In other projects other than NIO, Tencent is a follower at most. Generally, it only invests 300 or 200 million yuan. Take a look first.
At a press conference on December 11, 2017, Wilma announced that the first mass production vehicle is expected to enter mass production in 2018. However, without sufficient financial support, mass production will soon hit a bottleneck.
Shen told Reuters the company needed 20 billion yuan to function properly. The word spread like wildfire about weima automobile accumulative financing approaching 20 billion yuan. In February 2018, Shen Hui revealed that WeIMar Had raised nearly 20 billion RMB.
Amazing pace of financing
Even compared with the Internet car industry’s two most crazy financing enterprises, The speed of VIMA automobile is not much.
Nio founder and chairman Li Bin’s resume is no less impressive than Shen Hui’s. Whether it is Bitauto, Yixin group or Mobike, his entrepreneurship and investment are closely related to cars, and he is known as the “godfather of travel”.
Nio’s financing is also fast. It was founded in November 2014 and received its first financing seven months later. According to THE statistics of IT Orange, from June 2015 to November 2017, the financing accumulated at least 2.2 billion US dollars (about 13.8 billion YUAN), which is still not comparable to the speed of Weima Automobile.
If NiO belongs to Tencent, Xiaopeng is the representative of Alibaba. Xiaopeng Automobile was registered in January 2015. Its chairman is He Xiaopeng, who was once the founder of UC. According to the statistics of IT Orange, from April 2015 to February 2018, the total amount of financing for six times was at least 5 billion yuan, which took nearly 3 years. Its financing speed, is unable to compare with Weima automobile.
From the perspective of self-announced investors, The advantages of VIMA are not significant either.
In terms of quantity, according to the disclosed list, there are at least 7 weimar, at least 26 NIO and at least 19 Xiaopeng. The investors of Weimar are obviously small.
The above investment circles said that if we include the small investors who invest in stocks in the form of funds, there should be about 80 investors behind niO’s fundraising amount of 2.2 billion DOLLARS. The 20 billion yuan announced by WeIMar is obviously larger, but the number of investors is obviously smaller.
It is worth noting that Baidu Capital once led Weimar’s SERIES B financing, which was announced a few months ago. Baidu also appeared as the lead investor in NIO’s strategic financing, and baidu made a bigger bet on Weimar. According to one view in the industry, the reason why Baidu invested in NiO and then joined Hands with Weimar may be that Baidu is eager to export technology, while Nio is independent in the research and development of the Internet of Things and autonomous driving, and the two cannot be reconciled.
Tencent has also made a two-prong arrangement, but apparently pays more attention to NiO and only participated in one round of WeIMar financing. In fact, although the three business leaders all told the media that building cars costs a lot of money, at least 20 billion yuan. However, the advantages of all parties are not prominent weima Automobile, can far ahead of the peer, financing within one and a half years close to 20 billion, can be described as dazzling.
The investor said that some Internet car companies have been listed on the unicorn list of real outside valuation quotation between 10 billion — 13 billion, just think, even with 5 billion dollars to calculate, assuming that has reached 20 billion yuan, the car is not on the road, the founder and the team still have a few points?