At a time when VC funding is slowing in China, electric vehicles are one of the few sectors still keeping investors excited. For example, Zeekr, the luxury electric vehicle brand of China’s largest privately held automaker, Geely, Announced on Monday that investors committed to investing $750 million in its Series A funding round. Its post-money valuation has skyrocketed to $13 billion.
The news comes just two months after Zeekr said he had confidentially filed for a US initial public offering. At the time, Reuters reported that the electric car maker was seeking more than $1 billion in profit at a valuation of more than $10 billion. TechCrunch has reached out to Zeekr regarding its IPO status.
Investors who have agreed to back Zeekr in its Series A include some heavyweights such as Mobileye founder and CEO Amnon Shashua, Chinese battery giant and Tesla supplier Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd (CATL), the Yuexiu Industrial China state-owned Fund, Tongshang Fund and Xin’an Intelligent Manufacturing Fund, another Chinese state investment vehicle.
Proceeds from the increase will support Zeekr’s technology research and global expansion. In fact, the firm has been aggressively increasing its international presence. In January, my colleague Kirsten wrote that the company had some 3,000 open positions in more than 30 cities around the world, including its R&D center in Ningbo and Shanghai in China, and Gothenburg, Sweden. The young automaker was also opening an office in Silicon Valley.
Founded in March 2021, Zeekr secured its first round of external funding in August of that year. The investment totaled $500 million from a list of strategic investors, including Intel Capital, Intel’s corporate venture capital arm CATL, Chinese user-generated video site Bilibili, Chinese private equity fund Cathay Fortune Group, the which founder Yu Yong’s holding company is a major shareholder. in CATL, and Chinese private equity firm Boyu Capital, an investor in Ant Group.
