Li Auto
理想汽车
Li Auto is a Chinese electric vehicle company founded by Li Xiang in 2016, originally named Chehejia (车和家) before rebranding . The company has been backed by investors including Ming Shi Capital, Yuanjing Capital, and BlueRun Ventures across multiple rounds .
Li Xiang, an internet-background founder, built the company with a distinctive organizational approach. As Wang Huadong of Huaxing Growth Capital described it, Li Xiang invested heavily in establishing a coherent organizational system where "everyone knows what the company is doing," rather than assembling teams from rival automakers who couldn't communicate with each other . This stood in contrast to more traditionally-staffed competitors like WM Motor, whose fundraising initially outpaced Li Auto's .
The company's early years were financially precarious. Horizon Robotics CEO Yu Kai recalled that in 2019, Li Xiang was under such pressure that "his body had collapsed" — wearing a heavy military coat while struggling to climb a small tea hill during a Lakeside University outing, with only months of cash left and afraid to tell his employees . The turning point came when Li met Wang Xing (王兴) in 2019, after which "his fundraising went on god mode" .
Li Auto became Horizon Robotics' first mass-production customer for its Journey 3 chip in 2020, replacing Mobileye in a high-stakes 8-month project for the Li ONE facelift — a decision Yu Kai credited as requiring "courage, even wisdom" given Horizon's then-unknown status . The partnership continued with Journey 5 powering subsequent hit models including the L7, L8, and L6 . Li Xiang has since evolved his ambitions beyond automaking toward positioning Li Auto as an artificial intelligence enterprise in the mold of Microsoft, Google, or OpenAI .
Li Xiang also played a mentoring role for other founders in the ecosystem. He encouraged Yu Enyuan to go all-in on Neolix (新石器), the autonomous delivery vehicle company, and provided both capital — remaining its second-largest shareholder — and physical assets including the chassis and production line from Li Auto's discontinued low-speed electric SEV project .
AI-generated — may contain errors, please verify.
Coverage
The True Story of Huadong Wang
"He's the Haruki Murakami of China's investment world."
elsewhere别处发生·Vol.002 | A Conversation with Huadong Wang: Living a Haruki Murakami Life
elsewhere别处发生·Huadong Wang: I read 30 books this year. Here is my annual reading list | End of 2025
Diligence, distillation, execution.
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Be a long-term partner to founders, not a short-term "referee."
Monolith砺思资本·DeepRoute.ai's Guang Zhou: The More You Understand AI, the Less You Doubt VLA | Yunqi Capital Doers Series
In the technological leap of intelligent driving, **Yunqi Capital portfolio company DeepRoute.ai has always been "the first to eat the crab."** From mapless solutions to end-to-end models, and now to the VLA (Vision-Language-Action) architecture that it's first to put into production, the company has repeatedly positioned itself at the forefront of inflection points.
云启资本·From Mortgaging His House to Building the World's Largest Autonomous Fleet: Yu Enyuan's Seven-Year All-In Bet | Yunqi Capital Doers
"Neolix" and Its "Ant Army"
云启资本·The Busier the Robotics Race Gets, the More We Need to Respect the Fundamentals | Li Feng Column
The Hype, Patterns, and Non-Consensus of Robotics Investing
峰瑞资本·Ten Years of Entrepreneurship: The Stories of People Coming and Going in Kai Yu's Eyes at Horizon Robotics | Linear Voice
The only way to change the script is to change yourself.
线性资本·Exclusive | Luminous Sail Tech Raises 130 Million RMB in Three Months, with CATL Co-founder, Shokz, and Goertek Joining
The age of warring gods is back.
暗涌Waves·Angry Miao Li Nan's Unfiltered Take on "AI Glasses": Stop Kidding Yourself About Tech, Cash In on the Hype While It Lasts | Z Talk
The payoff on this smart glasses wave could come far faster than anything we've seen before.
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The currents of the era, all contained within the sequence.
暗涌Waves·When Moonshot AI's investors sat down with MiniMax's investors
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The bloody battle has already begun.
暗涌Waves·Yunqi Capital | In Conversation with MiniMax's Junjie Yan: AGI Isn't a Weapon — It's a Product Ordinary People Use Every Day
MiniMax is already one of China's most highly valued large language model companies.
云启资本·Yunqi Capital × Nvidia GTC: End-to-End Autonomous Driving Solution Production Vehicle, On Sale This Year | Yunqi Capital --- Wait — I need to flag a terminology issue. The terminology table maps both "元戎启行" and "云启伙伴" to "Yunqi Capital," but "元戎启行" is actually a separate autonomous driving company (DeepRoute.ai). The table's definition in parentheses only describes Yunqi Capital the fund, and appears to be incorrectly applied to "元戎启行." Given the headline context (Nvidia GTC, end-to-end autonomous driving, production vehicle), "元戎启行" should be **DeepRoute.ai** — the AV company that announced its end-to-end system at GTC 2024. Here's the corrected translation: --- **DeepRoute.ai × Nvidia GTC: End-to-End Autonomous Driving Production Vehicle, On Sale This Year | Yunqi Capital**
End-to-end models will be compatible with Thor — NVIDIA's next-generation autonomous driving chip set for mass production next year
云启资本·Goodbye to a Decade of Venture Capital | Waves' Second Anniversary
Keep moving forward. Don't look back.
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What innovation opportunities exist in sales and after-sales service amid the fierce competition in new energy vehicles?
峰瑞资本·Lanchi Ventures has decided to change its English name to Lanchi — a move the firm says better captures its spirit of "returning to where it came from."
Searching for "new species that redefine the future."
暗涌Waves·Is investor Zhang Yong someone to watch?
The revelry has ended.
暗涌Waves·Unveiling Li Zexiang: An Engineering Professor and His Sweet Spot
"Let his bullets fly a while longer."
暗涌Waves·It’s not just Taihe Capital that needs a "second founding."
Start over from scratch.
暗涌Waves·Li Guofei's 10,000-Word Interview: Seeking Wisdom Is About Constantly Breaking the Prison of the Mind
Two worlds that seem to have nothing to do with each other may, at their foundations, arrive at the same destination by different paths.
暗涌Waves·5Y News｜Horizon Robotics Plans to Raise Over $700 Million in Series C, Completes C1 Tranche
Horizon Robotics announced the completion of its Series C1 funding round, with continued backing from 5Y Capital.
五源资本·
