Thanks to IT House netizen Si Wenfeng for submitting the clue!
IT House reported on March 10 that according to People's Financial News, Li Bin, founder, chairman and CEO of Weilai, said at the fourth quarter and full-year financial report conference call for 2025 tonight that Shenji's second advanced smart chip for a wider range of customers has been successfully taped out and is currently in the process of mass production.
IT House noted that in July 2024, NIO announced the successful tape-out of its world's first car-sized 5nm high-performance smart driving chip "NIO Shenji NX9031", which marks that NIO has achieved independent design of hardware chips/underlying software. According to reports, this chip has more than 50 billion transistors, uses a 32-core CPU architecture, and has built-in LPDDR5x 8533Mbps rate RAM, which can achieve "high dynamic range and high-performance ISP". It has 6.5 G Pixel / s pixel processing capabilities and a processing delay of less than 5ms.
Li Bin also said that NIO, Letao, and Firefly will jointly develop lower-tier markets this year while deeply exploring key markets, and cover more prefecture-level cities with an efficient sales and service network through SKY stores jointly established by the three brands.
NIO CFO Qu Yu said at the conference call that the company will maintain a quarterly R&D investment of 2 billion to 2.5 billion yuan in 2026, continue to improve R&D efficiency based on the CBU operating mechanism, and will also dynamically adjust the company's R&D rhythm and investment based on operating conditions and ROI mechanisms to ensure the intensity of investment in key products and core technologies. At the same time, Qu Yu said that based on the company’s five large SUVs on sale this year and the strong performance of large vehicles in gross profit margins, NIO will strive to achieve non-GAAP full-year profits in 2026.
Qu Yu also said that vehicle gross profit margin in the first quarter of 2026 is expected to maintain the level of the fourth quarter of 2025. Although affected by seasonality and policies, ES8 stock orders and orders after the Spring Festival have recovered well, and ES8 deliveries accounted for a relatively high proportion of the overall delivery volume in the first quarter. Qu Yu also said that NIO will have five large SUVs on sale this year, and large vehicles will account for a relatively high proportion of overall sales. The gross profit of large vehicles is relatively high, and the company has stronger ability to resist risks. It is confident that the gross profit for the whole year will be maintained at a reasonable level. In addition, Qu Yu said that quarterly R&D investment of 2 billion to 2.5 billion yuan will be maintained in 2026 to promote the company's long-term competitiveness.
Today, NIO released its financial report for the fourth quarter and full year of 2025. NIO achieved an operating profit of 1.25 billion yuan in the fourth quarter, achieving the company's first quarterly profit. Cash reserves in the fourth quarter were 45.9 billion yuan, a significant increase of nearly 10 billion yuan from the previous quarter.
NIO disclosed in its financial report that on March 6, 2026, the company's board of directors approved the 2026 share incentive plan and approved the grant of 248,454,460 company restricted shares to the company's founder, chairman and CEO Li Bin accordingly. These restricted shares are divided into ten batches of equal amounts, and their vesting conditions are subject to the company's achievement of specific performance targets related to market value and net profit and Li Bin's continued employment in key positions. In addition, as of December 31, 2025, cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash, short-term investments and long-term time deposits were RMB 45.9 billion.
