A fund managed by NIO Capital, the investment firm in which Nio founder William Li is a managing partner, has agreed to buy 19.5% of Guangzhou Jinzhong Auto Parts, a supplier of wheel covers, badges and interior trim to Nio and other Chinese carmakers, for about 586 million yuan ($86 million), the company said in a filing.
Jinzhong was founded in Guangzhou in May 2004 and listed on the ChiNext board in November 2021. Its products are wheel trim, emblems and other exterior and interior decorative parts.
The buyer is Hangzhou Weizhi Equity Investment Fund, a partnership formed on April 21 with 701 million yuan of committed capital and set up for this transaction by Zhejiang NIO New Energy Private Fund Management, the fund manager of NIO Capital.
It becomes the second-largest shareholder.
Control does not change: the controlling holder, Guangzhou Sichengrui Enterprise Management, falls from 44.91% to about 27.88%, and Xin Hongping remains the actual controller.
NIO Capital is not the Chinese EV maker Nio Inc.
The firm was launched in 2016 by Nio together with Sequoia China and Hillhouse, with Hubei’s Yangtze River Industry Fund as cornerstone investor in its first yuan fund, according to Chinese reporting at the time, and its own site describes “a professional investment firm” founded that year for “energy, automobiles, and deep technology sectors.”
It is led by managing partners William Li and Ian Zhu.
The site names Zhu as its “founding member” and gives Li’s title as managing partner, reserving “founder” for his role at Nio.
The firm has raised five funds since 2016, three in dollars and two in yuan, with about 15 billion yuan under management, and closed a second yuan fund of more than 3 billion yuan in early 2024, as EV reported.
Its masthead lists CATL, Ronbay Technology, United Winners, Tuhu, Dida, Black Sesame Technologies, EVTECH, Pony.ai, Momenta, Inceptio and Seyond as portfolio companies, out of about 75 it reported holding in 2023.
Its investments track Nio’s supply chain.
An April bulletin from the firm listed eight portfolio companies on the Nio ES9, among them Anhui Shenji’s driving chip, Seyond’s LiDAR, EVTECH’s power electronics, AEW’s seats and the active suspension of ClearMotion, whose first plant in Changshu opened in 2024 to supply the ET9.
The fund also holds CALB, a Nio battery supplier, and last year invested in Momenta’s chip subsidiary Xinxin Hangtu, set up a consulting partnership with an Anhui government fund, led a round in robotics start-up Dexmal alongside Alibaba and put $20 million into used-car retailer Uxin.
The Terms
The sellers are transferring 23.686 million shares at 24.73 yuan each. The agreement set a floor of 80% of the close on the trading day before signing, and 24.73 yuan is exactly 80% of the 30.91 yuan close of September 2, so the parties printed the contractual minimum.
The stock fell 13.0% on Tuesday to 28.82 yuan, cutting the market value to about 3.5 billion yuan, still above the deal price.
The controlling company sells about 17.03% of the total, Xin Hongping 1.65%, and her concert parties Xin Hongyan and Li Xiaomin 0.41% each.
Payment is in three instalments, the first of 40%, from the buyer’s own or self-raised funds.
Two conditions make the discount conditional.
The sellers guarantee that Jinzhong’s net profit for 2027 to 2029, on the lower of reported or recurring figures, will total at least 150 million yuan, about 50 million yuan a year, and will compensate the buyer for the shortfall if the three-year total comes in below 80% of that.
And they commit at least 256 million yuan of the proceeds, about 44%, as interest-free shareholder loans to the company, on a revolving basis.
The board will be reorganised within 30 working days of registration into eight seats, two of them non-independent directors nominated by the buyer, with the sellers pledging to support the buyer’s nominees for management.
The transfer needs a shareholders’ meeting to waive the voluntary lock-up commitments Xin Hongping and Xin Hongyan gave at listing on their indirect holdings, with the independent directors’ majority approval first, then Shenzhen exchange confirmation and registration.
The company said completion is uncertain.
The Company
Jinzhong reported revenue of 1.127 billion yuan in 2025, down 0.6%, and a net loss of 7.5 million yuan, its first annual loss since listing, after profits of about 90.9 million yuan in 2023 and 85.6 million yuan in 2024.
In the first half of 2026 revenue rose 10.0% to 551 million yuan and the net loss widened to 34.3 million yuan. Its market value was about 4 billion yuan before the announcement. Its convertible bond was called for early redemption in January.
The 50-million-yuan-a-year profit guarantee is below the company’s 2023 and 2024 earnings and far above its current run rate, which is the tension in the deal.
On September 2 the company also announced a 184 million yuan ($27 million) cash acquisition of Hefei Kaichi Auto Parts, for 159 million yuan, and the fixed assets of Mengdachi Automotive Systems (Anhui), for 25 million yuan, to enter bumpers, spoilers and door panels through a plant already certified by carmaker customers and in volume production.
That deal was first signed as a letter of intent on July 23.
NIO Capital taking a stake in a supplier to Nio, with a profit guarantee and a loan-back from the founders, appears to be a supply-chain investment rather than a financial one.
