With a valuation of 8 billion, Tencent invested in a unicorn led by a doctoral supervisor

Text | Zhang Xue

Edit | Zhang Lijuan

Source | Invest in Net East Forty Capital

On April 8, Tencent quietly injected capital into Guangzhou Juwan Technology Research Institute, just a few days ago, the company just announced the completion of the A round of financing, and became a new energy unicorn with a valuation of 8 billion.

According to the Tianyancha App, recently, Guangzhou Juwan Technology Research Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Juwan Technology Research") underwent industrial and commercial changes, adding a number of shareholders such as Guangxi Tencent Venture Capital Co., Ltd., while the company's registered capital increased from 72.617 million yuan to 80.3144 million yuan, an increase of 10.6%. Among them, Guangxi Tencent Venture Capital holds 2.2611% of the shares, making it the sixth largest shareholder.

It is reported that this is the first time that Tencent has invested in enterprises upstream of the new energy vehicle industry chain.

Backed by GAC, only 60 million yuan was invested in incubation a year and a half ago

According to the data, Juwan Technology Research Institute was established in September 2020, which is the first internal incubation technology innovation company of GAC Group, which is jointly funded by GAC Group, GAC Capital, the pilot technical team of GAC Research Institute and the third-party strategic partner shareholding platform.

In August last year, Juwan Technology Research Institute announced the completion of a multi-hundred million yuan Pre-A round of financing, led by GF Securities subsidiaries GF Xinde, GF Qian and Guangzhou Financial Holdings Fund; followed by BOC Yuecai, Guangzhou Fund, Potential Energy Capital, etc.

Nearly ten months later, on April 1, at the media communication meeting of the annual report of GAC Group, Chairman Zeng Qinghong revealed that Juwan Technology Research has completed a round of financing with a valuation of 8 billion yuan, "When Juwan Technology Research Was established a year and a half ago, GAC invested 60 million yuan to incubate."

Less than two years after its establishment, after completing three rounds of financing, and doubling its valuation, why has Juwan Technology Research become the darling of capital?

From the official website, Juwan Technology Research focuses on the research and development, production, sales and service of super fast charging power batteries and a new generation of breakthrough energy accumulators and their systems.

At present, its research and development of 5-8 minutes to charge 80% of the "super fast charging lithium battery" has been mass production in GAC Aean models, XFC (eXtreme Fast Charge) extreme speed battery has created a world record of "the fastest electric vehicle charging technology", and is planning to build 1,000 super charging stations in 100 key cities across the country.

In terms of team building, Huang Xiangdong, chairman of Juwan Technology Research Institute, is not only a professor and doctoral supervisor of South China University of Technology, a fellow of the Society of Automotive Engineers of China, but also the first dean of gahic research institute; CEO Dr. Pei Feng has served as a director in the pilot technology department and new energy department of GAC research institute, presided over the research and development of new energy vehicles and three electric parts, and won the China Automotive Industry Science and Technology Progress Award.

Wisdom bud data shows that Juwan Technology Research Institute currently has a total of 12 published patent applications, of which 7 are invention patents, and the company's patent layout is mainly related to graphene, vehicle power and other fields.

In terms of production capacity, Juwan Technology Research Institute's battery pack factory in Nansha, Guangzhou, has been fully put into operation, and plans to build a R&D and production base in Guangzhou Huangpu Development Zone, engaged in the research and development and production of super fast charging cores, next-generation new energy storage devices and PACK integrated systems.

According to Pei Feng, at present, Juwan Technology Research Institute has rolled out the construction of about 500 acres of battery cell production base in Guangzhou. The first phase of the project is expected to be completed in 2023, with a production capacity of 8GWh, corresponding to the supply of 120,000 vehicles.

In addition, in the near future, Juwan Technology Research Institute also announced that it will work with Tianshu Energy to jointly build 1,000 supercharging stations in 100 cities in China from 2022 to 2024, with a total investment of more than 1 billion yuan. Specifically, in the first phase, the layout of Juwan Technology Research focuses on Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and the Pearl River Delta region.

Behind high valuations: from controversy to optimism

From the current point of view, Juwan Technology Research seems to rely on GAC and go smoothly, but in less than three years, it has also been subjected to questions and tests from the outside world.

In fact, there are already a number of car companies infiltrating the power battery industry, such as Great Wall Motor Dayu Battery, and its battery company Honeycomb Energy independently developed cobalt-free laminated batteries; SAIC Zhiji's silicon-doped lithium batteries; BYD blade batteries; Dongfeng Lantu "three no batteries"; BMW also bet on hydrogen fuel cells and solid-state batteries.

Unlike other manufacturers, Juwan Technology Research mainly develops graphene batteries.

In 2019, GAC Group released a "super fast charging battery" based on three-dimensional structural graphene (3DG) materials. According to GAC Group, the "super fast charging battery" can charge the battery to 85% in 8 minutes. In May 2020, GAC BJEV announced that its model Aion will take the lead in carrying graphene batteries and conduct mass production tests.

At that time, Ouyang Minggao, an expert in automotive power system and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said bluntly: "If someone tells you, this car can run 1,000 kilometers, recharge in a few minutes, and it is particularly safe, and the cost is still very low." Then you don't have to believe it, because this is impossible Now, in this regard, there has been no major breakthrough in recent years. ”

At the same time, the market also believes that there is still some uncertainty in the reliability and safety of graphene batteries.

At present, the 3DG graphene of Juwan Technology Research Institute is mainly used in super fast charging, and in the future, the technology will be widely used in electric vehicles, 3C, energy storage systems, super fast charging stations, engineering services, etc.

"Juwan Technology Research focuses on solving the problems of slow charging and difficult charging that are the most prominent contradictions in the current market application." Huang Xiangdong said.

It can be seen that the construction and layout of battery cell and battery pack production capacity is only the first step of Juwan Technology Research, it will also unite the power industry, the financial industry, charging pile manufacturing and operation industry, comprehensively promote the construction of super charging station infrastructure, and strive to solve the problems of "difficult charging and slow charging" in the new energy automobile industry.

It is reported that the positioning of Juwan Technology Research is not as simple as the technology and product supplier behind GAC Aean, their goal is to export technology and products to the whole industry, and become a high-tech company in the field of electrification and intelligence.

Pei Feng said that the Juwan team is currently in contact with other automakers, and battery products have been introduced by other car manufacturers other than GAC. Juwan's super fast charging battery has the characteristics of charging interface is compatibility, compared with the existing ordinary power charging equipment on the market, it has the characteristics of maximizing the use of charging pile power.

Super fast charging technology is regarded as a key technology leading the future of automotive industry transformation.

After the realization of mass production, Juwan Technology Research Institute will gradually develop its applications in the fields of super fast charging batteries, super capacitors, body lightweight, fuel cells and other fields according to the maturity of technology and market, and the company's business will also extend to the upstream and downstream of the new energy industry chain when the conditions are ripe. The recently raised Series A financing will also be used for capacity construction, research and development of second-generation technologies, and supplementing daily working capital.

Guangfa Xinde pointed out that the advantages of Juwan Technology Research are that one is that it has differentiated technical reserves and engineering capabilities for large-scale mass production; second, it has the blessing of seed customers to help them tide over the stage of high uncertainty in the early stage; and the third is an efficient and capable team, which makes the team have rich experience in the field of new energy and energy storage materials.

It is not Tencent's first investment in the GAC department

It is understood that the cooperation between Tencent and GAC has a long history. As early as 2017, when Tencent announced its formal involvement in the Internet of Vehicles market, GAC was one of only three cooperative companies.

As we all know, in the top four of the Internet of Vehicles BATH, Huawei and Tencent are the only two "no car" factions.

Previously, when Tang Daosheng answered the outside world's questions about Tencent's car manufacturing, he gave a clear reason: Tencent would not touch the hardware field, did not make mobile phones in the early years, and now will not build a whole car.

However, Tencent's actions in the automotive field have not stopped.

As early as 2015, the Harmony Futeng Industrial Fund created by Tencent, Foxconn and Harmony Automobile hatched FMC (Byton) and Aiche (Aiways Automobile). In addition, Tencent has also participated in NIO's Series A, C and D rounds of financing, and is still the second largest shareholder of NIO.

Time to 2021, under the gradual rise of new energy vehicles, "BAT" have come down, and the more radical Ali and Baidu have jointly established new energy vehicle brands "Zhiji Automobile" and "Jidu Automobile" with SAIC and Geely respectively.

During the 2021 Shanghai Auto Show, GAC Group and Tencent held a strategic cooperation upgrade signing, which is also regarded by the outside world as Tencent's first chess piece in the field of car manufacturing.

In fact, since 2017, GAC Group and Tencent have tried to cooperate and develop in many aspects, and have achieved results and progress in the content and services of intelligent and connected vehicle networking, ecological cloud platform, intelligent driving, Ruqi travel and capital operation.

For example, in 2019, GAC Group, Tencent, Guangzhou Bus Group, Didi Chuxing and other investors jointly invested in the establishment of Ruqi Travel, with a total investment of more than 1 billion yuan.

For example, Tencent's IoV TAI application and content service related products have been equipped with applications on GAC Trumpchi M6, GS5, GS8, GAC Aion AION S, AION LX and other models, and the new Trumpchi GS4 is also the world's first mass-produced model equipped with WeChat car version.

Nowadays, with the continuous development of new energy vehicles, the trillion-level energy storage market has become a new growth pole for power battery companies. Therefore, Tencent's investment in Juwan Technology Research is not surprising, on the one hand, Tencent and GAC have a basis for cooperation and trust, on the other hand, battery technology and ultra-fast charging are foreseeable trends.

The recent period coincided with the critical period for GAC to promote the capitalization of internal projects. At the annual report release and communication meeting held at the beginning of the month, Zeng Qinghong, chairman of GAC Group, said that in addition to GAC Aian, Ruqi Travel and Juwan Technology Research Institute, which GAC Group participated in investment and incubation, are also promoting capitalization operations.