Li Auto's Mahexin signs RMB 1.625B financing to expand AI chip sales
The AMW Read
First external financing meaningfully advances an automotive chip subsidiary toward third-party AI accelerator sales, but broader impact remains unproven without disclosed external customers.
Li Auto's Mahexin signs RMB 1.625B financing to expand AI chip sales
Li Auto announced on October 16 that Shanghai Mahexin Technology, its chip subsidiary, signed its first equity financing agreement for RMB 1.625 billion. Hangzhou Jingtao, BlueRun Ventures and Huaye Tiancheng led the round, with MiraclePlus participating. Hangzhou Jingtao and associated funds received additional subscription rights of up to RMB 500 million; full exercise would bring the subsidiary's post-money valuation to RMB 17.1 billion. Li Auto said it would retain a 74.01% stake following the financing.
The transaction supports an effort to turn an internal automotive chip platform into an externally supplied AI infrastructure business. Its M100 uses a 5nm automotive-grade process and delivers a company-reported 1,280 TOPS per chip. The source says it is already installed in production Li Auto vehicles. Li Auto describes the design as a dynamic-dataflow architecture combining algorithms, compiler, operating system and silicon to improve edge inference efficiency. That integrated stack makes the proposed expansion relevant to AI accelerator competition, although TOPS alone does not establish application performance or operating economics.
For builders and investors, the concrete question is whether deployment inside the parent company can translate into independent customer demand. Mahexin plans to offer external customers AI chips, domain controllers and operating-system products and services, including opportunities beyond automotive applications. The report names no external customers or associated revenue. Evaluation should therefore focus on third-party design wins, production scalability and commercial delivery before treating the financing as evidence of a broader merchant-chip business.
