Geely Holding Group will take a 30% stake in Nio Power, the battery swapping and charging unit of Nio, in a deal that values the business at about 16 billion yuan ($2.4 billion), Nio said on Sunday.
A Geely Holding subsidiary will hand over Yiyi Internet Technology (Chongqing) Co., Ltd., its battery swapping operator for the commercial mobility market, and pay 640 million yuan ($95.3 million) in cash for newly issued Nio Power shares, according to Nio’s statement.
The Shanghai-headquartered EV maker will keep control through its subsidiary Nio Holding Co., Ltd., or Nio China, which will hold 63.6%.
An existing investor, Wuhan Guangchuang Emerging Technology Phase I Venture Capital Fund Partnership, will hold the remaining 6.4%.
In a second, linked transaction, Nio China will take a 10% stake in Zhejiang Haohan Energy Technology Co., Ltd., Geely Holding’s charging business.
Both deals are subject to regulatory clearances and other customary closing conditions. Nio did not give a closing date.
The announcement came after posts on Chinese social media said the two groups would sign an agreement in Hangzhou on Monday.
The Terms
Geely Holding’s stake can be cut to no less than 20% if the business underperforms, under post-closing adjustments “tied to certain operational milestones,” Nio said.
It did not say what the milestones are.
The Geely subsidiary also has an option to invest another 640 million yuan ($95.3 million) in cash.
That would lift its stake to 34.0% and cut Nio China’s to 60.0%, before any adjustment, according to the statement.
The option runs until two years after closing, or until Nio Power signs binding agreements for a new funding round, whichever comes first.
At a post-money valuation of about 16 billion yuan, a 30% stake is worth about 4.8 billion yuan ($715 million).
That implies a value of approximately 4.2 billion yuan ($625.6 million) for Yiyi, and a pre-money valuation for Nio Power of about 11.2 billion yuan ($1.7 billion), according to EV calculations based on Nio’s figures.
Nio did not disclose a value for Yiyi, or how much Nio China will pay for its stake in Haohan.
Haohan will use that cash “to purchase certain charging assets from NIO,” the company said.
A CFO in Charge
Nio Power is headed by Chief Financial Officer Stanley Qu, who attended the handover of Nio’s entire Wuhan swap network to state-owned partners in August.
Qu, a former PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) auditor who joined Nio in 2016, was promoted to CFO in July 2024.
He took over the swapping and charging business in April 2025, reporting directly to William Li, after Shen Fei, who had led the unit, was named president of Nio’s Onvo brand.
Nio Power had begun taking outside money, and relying on partners to fund stations, before the change.
The unit’s first outside investment came in May 2024, when the Wuhan Guangchuang fund led a 1.5 billion yuan ($223 million) strategic round, Nio said at the time.
“This year, the vast majority of the swap station construction funding won’t come from us,” Li told reporters in March 2025, days before the change. “We’ll work with battery swap partners and lease the stations.”
The model has grown under Qu. Nio calls it “technology operation plus asset holding,” in which the partner owns the station and Nio Power runs it.
Li and Qu attended the signing of a deal with Zhong’an Energy for 500 partner-funded stations on June 25.
More than 800 of Nio’s stations have been built with over 40 state-capital platforms and financial institutions across 25 provinces and regions, the company said in September.
Nio has 4,125 swap stations in operation, Li said on Sunday.
Nio aims to add more than 1,000 stations this year, and to pass 4,600 by year-end.
CATL’s Stake Still Missing
Nio’s statement lists Nio China, the Wuhan fund and the Geely subsidiary as Nio Power’s only shareholders once the deal closes.
It does not include CATL.
The battery maker was “advancing an investment capped at RMB 2.5 billion” in Nio Power, or $372 million, Nio said in March 2025, when the two signed a battery swapping partnership.
That investment had not been completed as of September 18, and no shareholding had been disclosed.
From Framework to Equity
The deal turns a framework into an ownership tie, the first equity link between Nio Inc. and Geely Holding.
Geely Holding and Nio signed a strategic agreement on battery swapping technology in Hangzhou on November 29, 2023, according to Nio.
The company Geely is now folding into Nio Power signed that agreement.
Jack Liu, then Chief Executive Officer of Yiyi Power, signed for Geely Holding, and Shen Fei, then a Senior Vice President of Nio, signed for Nio, with Geely Chairman Li Shufu and William Li as witnesses, according to Nio.
Nearly three years later, no Geely-group car swaps batteries at Nio stations, and none of Nio’s carmaker partners had launched a compatible model as of April.
“In the short term, we will not treat whether third-party companies use our battery swap network as a priority — it is not our strategic focus,” Chief Executive Officer William Li said at the time.
Sunday’s statement goes only part of the way on vehicles.
Nio and Geely Holding “have made preliminary plans for the adoption of battery swapping technology and provision of related services for both consumer-facing vehicle models and commercial mobility businesses” from Geely Holding’s related entities, it said.
“The finalization and implementation of these plans are subject to further discussions between the relevant parties,” it added.
Nio said the transactions “reflect industry recognition of NIO’s battery swapping technologies, network and operational capabilities.”
Yiyi and Haohan
Yiyi, known in Chinese as Yiyi Hulian, ran more than 300 swap stations in more than 30 cities in November 2023, when it launched its third-generation station, Xinhua reported.
Its stations served ride-hailing and commercial models, including the Cao Cao 60, according to that report.
Yiyi had “years of experience in providing battery swapping for commercial vehicles,” Nio said when the two groups signed in 2023.
Haohan grew out of Zeekr Energy, the charging network of Geely’s Zeekr brand, and now also serves Galaxy, Lynk & Co, smart and Lotus drivers, Tencent News reported on September 21.
It had more than 2,000 charging stations in 216 cities, according to the report.
Geely Auto Group unveiled a charging system with a 2,250 kW station on September 23.
A day later, Geely communications official Kevin Chen called Nio “a friend” on X and promised “more to come.”
Nio’s statement did not mention its chip unit, GeniTech, which some bloggers had named as a possible subject of the announcement.
