Li Auto chip unit seeks first outside funding at roughly 15 billion yuan pre-money valuation

Li Auto’s chip subsidiary is pushing ahead with its first external fundraising round, according to an exclusive report by LatePost Auto. The unit is seeking tens of billions of yuan at a pre-money valuation of about 15 billion yuan.

Entities set up in Hong Kong and Shanghai

Corporate registration records show that Mach Intelligent Cores Limited was established in Hong Kong on July 14. On August 4, it wholly set up Shanghai Mach Zhixin Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd., with Li Auto CTO Xie Yan serving as legal representative. A few days later, it also wholly established Shanghai Mahe Xin Technology Co., Ltd., whose legal representative is Li Auto co-company secretary Wang Yang.

In-house chip team has about 200 people

The report said Li Auto’s self-developed chip team has about 200 employees. Its work is focused on AI computing architecture, chip design, and related software development, while the company is advancing both vehicle-side and cloud-side chip projects.

Its first in-house chip, Mach M100, has already entered mass production and has been installed in several all-new or refreshed models launched this year. Another cloud inference chip is under development and also uses a dataflow architecture.

AI computing remains a key destination for semiconductor funding

In the first half of this year, financing in China’s semiconductor sector totaled about 162.7 billion yuan, with AI computing among the main areas attracting capital.

For comparison, NIO chip subsidiary Anhui Shenji completed a 2.257 billion yuan first-round financing in February this year, reaching a post-money valuation of nearly 10 billion yuan.