Li Auto's Chip Subsidiary Seeks External Financing at 15 Billion RMB Valuation
Li Auto's chip subsidiary is reportedly advancing its first round of external financing, aiming to raise several billion RMB at a pre-money valuation of around 15 billion RMB. The company's 200-person in-house chip team is currently developing both vehicle-side and cloud-side AI processors. Designing proprietary automotive silicon allows EV manufacturers to reduce dependence on chipmakers like Nvidia and optimize autonomous driving software-hardware integration. Spin-offs also enable independent capital raising to offset the massive R&D expenses inherent to semiconductor development. The chip enterprise is structured through Mach Intelligent Cores Limited in Hong Kong and managed by Li Auto CTO Xie Yan. It follows the announcement of Li Auto's Mach M100, a 5nm automotive-grade chip delivering 1,280 TOPS of computing power that is being deployed across its vehicle lineup.
## BACKGROUND
Automakers are increasingly designing custom silicon to meet the high computational demands of modern autonomous driving architectures. Automotive AI chips require immense processing throughput, measured in TOPS (trillions of operations per second), to handle real-time perception and decision-making algorithms.