After SU7 became a hit, Lei Jun reaped a 9 billion smart driving IPO!

According to the prospectus, Zongmu Technology has completed 9 rounds of financing, and the financing round has reached the E round, with a cumulative subscription amount of 2.247 billion yuan. In the E round of financing, Zongmu Technology raised 867 million yuan at a subscription price of 93.56 yuan per share. The company's registered capital increased from RMB 85.506711 million to RMB 96.316135 million, and the company's valuation exceeded 9 billion yuan.

The lineup of investors is also very luxurious, with well-known VCs such as Legend Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, Fuxing Capital, and Denso Investment all investing. In June 2021, Xiaomi Group led the D3 round of financing, subscribing 1,073,477 shares for a total consideration of 60,632,508 yuan, just 100 days after Lei Jun announced the car-making plan.

In addition to the 3.48384 million shares transferred from Defeng Jiarun, Pingtan Jianfa No. 2 and Collaborative Innovation in May 2021, after the completion of the D3 round of financing, Xiaomi jumped to the fourth largest shareholder with 4.557317 million shares, holding 8.5% of the shares, second only to Zongmu Hong Kong, Ningbo Zongmu and old shareholder Legend Capital.

However, it is worth noting that Xiaomi’s bet is only part of Lei Jun’s car-making layout, and Lei Jun’s investment in car companies is more like “casting a wide net.”

Through the Yangtze River Industry Fund, Xiaomi has invested in Hesai Technology, Honeycomb Energy, Smart Interconnect, Black Sesame Intelligence and many other auto industry chain companies to build its own "circle of friends". These companies are now knocking on the door of the capital market one after another, and Xiaomi may reap a series of IPO dividends in the future.

But in the final analysis, Xiaomi's road to car manufacturing has just begun. The SU7, which took three years to build, is only Lei Jun's first answer sheet in the field of vehicle manufacturing. More importantly, it is the in-depth layout for the future. Xiaomi, which focuses on "investment + incubation", coupled with Lei Jun's style of loving, being able to, and being able to roll more, may really become a leading player in the "new force in car manufacturing".

After all, when Mr. Lei officially announced the car manufacturing plan, he said: Xiaomi has 108 billion in cash (Xiaomi’s cash reserves have reached 136.3 billion in 2023), we can afford the losses!

02 Queuing up for IPO and competing for the AI ​​trend

Looking through the prospectuses filed recently, there is no company that is not losing money. Compared with Heizhima Intelligence, which lost nearly 10 billion yuan in three years, and Horizon Robotics, which lost more than 17.5 billion yuan in three years, Zongmu Technology is even a bit "small compared to the big ones".

If "burning money" is a huge mountain weighing on the heads of intelligent driving companies, then "losing money" is a common problem in this field.

Zongmu Technology also admitted in the "risk factors" of this prospectus: there is no guarantee that there will be net cash inflow from operating activities in the future. In other words, if the company cannot generate sufficient income and effectively manage expenses, the company may continue to lose money.

Since the launch of ChatGPT, the concept of AI has been hyped up in the secondary market and has become a new investment target. For the smart driving unicorns struggling to survive, AI has also become a "timely rain" to extend the life of the company.

Zongmu Technology, which has attempted IPO for the third time, is backed by well-known capital, has its own core technology, and occupies a certain market share in the domestic intelligent driving market. The dual-track road of "AI + intelligent driving" may become the key to Zongmu Technology's breakthrough of bottlenecks and turn losses into profits. We will wait and see what the road ahead holds.