Byton secures investment from CATL, closes with $500M
Electric car startup Byton has closed its latest round of financing. It collected half a billion dollars from investors, the latest being CATL that joins the likes of China’s FAW. Byton, led by former BMWi manager Breitfeld, is about to present their second concept EV.
It has been round B of financing for Byton and this time another big name from China got on board. While the EV startup would not disclose the size of CATL’s investment it made it big news. CATL declined to comment. Still shares in the battery powerhouse soared 44 percent on their debut in Shenzhen today, the maximum allowed for newly listed stocks on their first day of trade.
CATL is not the only grand company from China placing its hopes in Byton. The startup had been set up from the start to cover multiple markets. It has got offices in California’s Silicon Valley for R&D, Germany’s Munich for design and of course multiple sites in China for electric car production.
Says Dr. Carsten Breitfeld, CEO and co-founder, BYTON: “We aim to build Byton into a global premium brand with ‘China Root, Global Reach’ as the core of our development strategy.”
It appears to be a safe bet, given that Byton is in fact a label of Future Mobility, an outlet backed by Foxconn and Tencent.
Byton last year raised 240 million dollars in an earlier round of funding from investors including Chinese retailer Suning and Fullshare Holdings. Chinese state-owned FAW was among the first investors as well and this time round spent 260 million dollars according to Byton (we reported).
Byton is about to unveil their second concept electric car at the CES Asia this June. Expect our report live on site.
Furthermore, Byton officially opened their HQ in Nanjing, China. In terms of electric car production, the company’s first batch of prototype models is set to roll out in April 2019 for testing, with the pilot production programme starting in the first half of 2019. Byton will first offer their electric cars in China before expanding to Europe in 2020.
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