Nio’s founder and CEO William Li said the company is backing Senior VP Ren Shaoqing’s new embodied-intelligence startup as a “strategic shareholder,” describing the arrangement as a way to stay close to the physical AI sector — without weighing on Nio’s profit-and-loss statement.
Li addressed the topic during Nio’s second-quarter earnings call on Tuesday, responding to an analyst from CICC who asked about long-term cooperation between the Shanghai-based EV maker and the new company.
“Mr. Ren Shaoqing, the Head of our Smart Driving department, is now also starting up a new business regarding physical AI and also embodied intelligence, and Nio is supporting [the] business as a strategic shareholder,” Li said.
Ren will retain his role as head of the smart driving division and remains “responsible for the overarching technology as well as the long-term tech road map for our products,” Li added.
Focused on the Core Business
Li framed the structure as a deliberate choice to preserve Nio’s operational focus at a moment when the automaker is pushing toward sustained profitability.
“Right now, Nio is staying focused on our core business,” the founder stated.
However, he noted that “through this startup by Mr. Ren, we can also keep tracking of the latest developments in the physical AI and also embodied intelligence without diluting our focus, affecting our P&L.”
The separate entity will allow Nio to “make full use of our resources as well as attracting external strategic shareholders and investors.”
He called the arrangement “necessary and also meaningful.”
The comments came alongside Nio’s second-quarter results, which showed revenue rising 69.1% year over year to 32.1 billion yuan ($4.8 billion) on 107,658 vehicle deliveries.
Nio posted an adjusted net profit of 26.1 million yuan ($3.9 million) for the quarter, extending a run of adjusted profitability that began in the fourth quarter of 2025.
Talent Competition
William Li cited competition for AI talent as a further reason for the arrangement.
Physical AI and embodied intelligence have drawn senior autonomous driving engineers away from automakers across China’s EV sector in recent quarters, a trend EV has documented.
“The competition for the AI talent within the arena of physical AI is also quite intense,” Li commented, noting that “through such startup, we can also better capture the top-notch talent in the industry.”
Retaining and attracting researchers through a dedicated startup structure “will also be beneficial to the long-term development of both the startup as well as for our AI-related business.”
Former Nio intelligent-driving executive Harry Wong resigned in October 2025 to join Momenta, the autonomous driving software company Ren co-founded a decade ago.
Former XPeng autonomous driving chief Li Liyun joined robotics startup EngineAI Robotics earlier this year, and Li Auto’s previous smart driving chief Lang Xianpeng left to co-found Kunlunxing Robotics with a former Huawei executive.
The current or former autonomous driving chiefs of all three of China’s major EV startups — Nio, XPeng and Li Auto — have now become involved in embodied AI to varying degrees.
Shift from ‘Late-Comer Strategy’
The support for Ren’s venture could signal a partial shift from the position William Li showed earlier this year, when he said Nio would adopt a “late-comer strategy” on robots and wait until the company achieved sustained profitability before entering the field directly.
“We shouldn’t rush to do everything at the forefront. In some areas, we should adopt a late-comer strategy and let others take the lead first,” Li said at a media briefing at the time.
By then, the Nio founder stated that the company would begin preparations one to two years before any market entry and that its world-model technology and manufacturing capabilities could eventually be applied to embodied robots.
Backing Ren’s startup as a strategic investor rather than building an in-house robotics division preserves that framework while giving Nio a closer vantage point than a pure late-comer stance would allow.
Li said he expects the relationship between Nio and the new company to deepen over time.
“For the long term, we believe that we will have a lot of strategic collaborations and projects between Nio and also this AI startup,” he said.
Ren’s Position in Nio
Ren first joined Nio in 2020 and was promoted to Senior Vice President earlier this year.
He has overseen the development of Nio’s world-model technology for intelligent driving and in September 2025 took on a dual role as chair professor at the University of Science and Technology of China’s AI laboratory.
Chinese local media outlet Red Probe first reported on August 21 that Ren had founded an embodied robotics company and that the venture may have already secured funding.
Neither the company’s name nor the size of any funding round has been disclosed thus far.
Nio has guided for third-quarter deliveries of 108,000 to 111,000 vehicles and said it is targeting average monthly deliveries above 40,000 units in the fourth quarter.
