CATL says "Hello" to ROBOTAXI.

CATL has made another move. This time, the "King of Batteries" officially greeted ROBOTAXI, saying "Hello," and stepped into the arena.

The cause of the matter is that on June 23, Hello Inc. officially announced that its Hello Robotaxi business had completed a financing round of over 3 billion yuan, introducing strategic investments from Ant Group and CATL. The entity of the business is the newly registered "Shanghai Zaofu Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd." (hereinafter referred to as "Zaofu").

Zaofu has a registered capital of 1.288 billion yuan and will focus on the R & D, safety application, and commercialization of L4-level autonomous driving technology. The shareholders are Shanghai Yundang Enterprise Management Consulting Co., Ltd. (Ant Group), Shanghai Junha Network Technology Co., Ltd. (Hello Inc.), and Ningbo Meishan Bonded Port Area Wending Investment Co., Ltd. (CATL).

Previously, Hello Inc., Ant Group, and CATL signed a tripartite strategic cooperation agreement in April this year. This time, they are really getting started.

However, just as CATL's Chairman Zeng Yuqun stood in the center when signing the agreement, we are more concerned about the motivation, purpose, vision, etc. behind CATL's investment as a battery giant. These underlying considerations are the key points.

Hello! ROBOTAXI

Let's start with Hello Inc. It was originally Hello Bike, founded in March 2016, with its headquarters in Shanghai. According to Hello Inc.'s previous IPO prospectus for listing on the US stock market, Ant Group is the largest shareholder of Hello Inc.

It is reported that the Hello Robotaxi business and R & D team have recruited a group of technical talents in the fields of large AI models and autonomous driving, completing the construction of the core talent matrix. This is also the result of Hello Inc.'s continuous deepening of the travel business, expansion into overseas markets, and promotion of the in - depth application of AI in the travel field in recent years.

When travel platforms are betting on the Robotaxi track, Hello Inc. is not the first to enter. For example, Caocao Chuxing launched the Caocao Zhixing autonomous driving platform on February 28. Vehicles equipped with Geely's "Thousand - Li Vast" Robotaxi solution started demonstration operations in Suzhou and Hangzhou. In addition, it is expected to launch an L4 - level Robotaxi customized model by the end of 2026.

In addition, Xiangdao Chuxing, a travel platform under SAIC, announced that it had completed a Series C financing round of over 1.3 billion yuan and launched a plan for a Hong Kong IPO. After the Series C financing, Xiangdao Chuxing plans to build an L4 - level Robotaxi fleet in Shanghai, with the fleet size expected to reach 200 vehicles by 2026. Ruqi Chuxing, a company in which GAC Group has a stake, has also been listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

When others are gearing up, Hello Inc. can't afford to lag behind.

Regarding the competition in the ROBOTAXI field, Hello Inc.'s cognitive logic is that the next wave of AI is to integrate into the physical world, and intelligent driving, especially autonomous driving, is the key technology to achieve general physical AI. As some people believe, the next concrete form of the intelligent agent is not the mobile phone but the car.

Therefore, from the perspective of the cooperation background, the three parties will integrate CATL's battery technology, Ant Group's AI and payment ecosystem, and Hello Inc.'s 28 million daily active users and operation and maintenance networks in 360 cities to jointly promote the R & D and scenario implementation of autonomous driving technology.

In terms of technology layout, CATL will also provide the CIIC intelligent skateboard chassis and long - life batteries (with a range of 1000 kilometers and a lifespan of 2 million kilometers, but the model is unknown), as well as the "Chocolate" intelligent battery - swapping model. Ant Group will contribute large AI models and blockchain technology, and Hello Inc. will open up real - world test scenarios.

According to the commercialization plan of the tripartite agreement in April, starting from the third quarter of 2025, 100,000 intelligent electric vehicles (this data seems wrong. Should it be 1000 vehicles?) and 500 intelligent battery - swapping cabinets will be piloted in 20 cities such as Shanghai and Chengdu to solve the range and energy - replenishment bottlenecks of Robotaxis.

At a previous technology communication meeting, Hello Inc. CEO Yang Lei's statement revealed its technology route choice: "The first - model vehicle will directly adopt CATL's chassis architecture, and only independently develop autonomous driving algorithms and vehicle control systems." According to media analysis, this "asset - light" model is in sharp contrast to the self - developed full - stack solutions of Baidu Apollo and Pony.ai.

For Hello Inc., CATL's CIIC integrated intelligent skateboard chassis can greatly shorten the R & D time. It doesn't need to spend a huge amount of time and cost on vehicle models like traditional car companies, but can quickly develop models. In fact, this is also the vision of CATL in developing the skateboard chassis. It is not really aiming at the share of passenger cars, but at the trillion - dollar market of ROBOTAXI.

However, just as the outside world questions Hello Inc., investors care very much about the cost - effectiveness of technology implementation. Hello Inc.'s initial 3 - billion - yuan financing is only enough to support two - year R & D according to industry benchmarks. The annual operation and maintenance cost of a thousand - vehicle fleet is nearly 100 million yuan, not including the high cost of road - test licenses and data centers.

This will greatly test Hello Inc.'s subsequent financing ability. In this tripartite game of "technology - scenario - capital", CATL's trial - and - error cost seems not too high and is within a reasonable tolerance range.

CATL's "Grand Plan"

If we follow the view of the "grand - plan theorists", in addition to passenger cars, commercial vehicles, energy storage, and battery swapping, CATL is now also eyeing robots (ROBOTAXI also falls under the concept of robots). It is playing a "huge game".

So, CATL is not only taking a stake in Hello Inc. Recently, a piece of news shows that CATL is also very concerned about the field of embodied intelligence.

On June 23, Beijing Galaxy Universal Robotics Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Galaxy Universal") announced that it had officially completed a new round of financing of 1.1 billion yuan. Behind this financing, there are new top - tier investors such as CATL, Puquan Capital (CATL Capital), Guokai Kechuang of the China Development Bank, Beijing Robot Industry Fund, and GGV Capital.

Previously, CATL had invested in embodied intelligence companies such as Qianxun Intelligence and Vita Power through its affiliated capital, and also cooperated with Shanghai Jiao Tong University to research and develop five types of intelligent robots, including humanoid robots. I also mentioned this in the article "CATL's 'Grand Plan' for Robots".

Although Galaxy Universal is a rookie in the field of embodied intelligence, it has a remarkable background. The company's founder and CTO Wang He, as well as co - founder Yao Tengzhou, have outstanding backgrounds. Driven by the founding team, Galaxy Universal has made significant progress in scenarios such as smart retail, industry, and health care.

Galaxy Universal released the world's first humanoid robot smart retail solution in March this year. Currently, nearly ten stores in Beijing have deployed and are operating the wheeled dual - arm robot Galbot on a regular basis, and it is expected to be used in 100 stores across the country this year. In addition, on June 17, Galaxy Universal also announced the establishment of a joint venture with Boyuan Capital under the Bosch Group and signed a tripartite strategic memorandum.

It is worth noting that regarding CATL as the leading industrial strategic investor, Galaxy Universal pointed out that CATL will continue to deepen industrial collaboration and provide key support for the technology implementation and large - scale application of Galaxy Universal's embodied intelligence large model in the industrial field.

In other words, CATL also shows a keen sense of smell in the direction of the embodied intelligent robot field, which has a market scale of trillions of dollars. However, when I inquired about this matter from CATL, the relevant information was almost "nonexistent" and "not for public dissemination".

Actually, according to relevant market reports, the scale of the Chinese embodied intelligence market reached 863.4 billion yuan in 2024, a year - on - year increase of 65%. Among them, robots accounted for 55.6%. It is expected to exceed 973.1 billion yuan in 2025 and may reach 4 trillion yuan by 2030, with a very promising future.

The same is true for the ROBOTAXI market. According to Goldman Sachs' latest research report, the Chinese Robotaxi market is expected to grow rapidly from $54 million in 2025 to $12 billion in 2030 and reach a scale of $47 billion by 2035, with a compound annual growth rate of over 96%.

Therefore, CATL's continuous "cross - border" investment operations in recent years are all forward - looking layouts that can be understood. For the future, it is definitely not feasible to stick to the "first growth curve" of the battery field. It is necessary to continuously try new directions to find the "second growth curve", or even the third and fourth curves.

This article is from the WeChat official account "C Dimension", author: Wang Xiaoxi, editor - in - chief: Beian, editor: Wang Yue. It is published by 36Kr with authorization.