Bin Li

Bin Li (李斌) is the founder, chairman and CEO of NIO. Per 暗涌Waves's account of NIO's fundraising history, he had already taken Bitauto and Yixin public and engineered the Mobike exit before building cars, which is why pre-IPO NIO drew 50+ investors across six rounds totaling over $2.4 billion — Liu Qiangdong famously said yes in ten seconds over a dinner, and Li himself pledged $150 million of personal money to win over a skeptical Lei Jun. In a 2024 interview covered by 十字路口Crossing, he declared NIO would "never build a robotaxi," arguing smart driving's real value is freeing attention and cutting accidents rather than replacing drivers, while detailing NIO's bets on SkyOS, in-house chips, the NIO Phone, and roughly RMB 10 billion in annual R&D.

One disambiguation: the name also appears for a Bin Li who serves as CFO/COO of Linear Capital (an EY transaction-advisory veteran before joining), per Linear Capital's own publications — a different person from the NIO founder.