NIO Inc. NIO Chief Executive

What Bin Li says in public, and what their own SEC filings show they own.

Bin Li

Founder, Chairman & CEO · NIO Inc.

Founded the company as NextEV in November 2014 and has been chairman since inception and chief executive since March 2018. Before NIO he co-founded Bitauto in 2000 and chaired the NYSE-listed Bitauto Holdings from 2010 to 2020. He is the architect of the battery-swap strategy that separates the battery from the car, and of the three-brand structure - NIO, ONVO and firefly - that took quarterly deliveries past 124,000 in the December 2025 quarter.

What they own

Ownership

Every issuer Bin Li files as an insider of
CompanyRoleReportedBeneficial% of class
CVVT CHINA VALVES TECHNOLOGY, INC · exited Director —
2012-09-17		 — —

Reported is every lot on the person's own Forms 3, 4 and 5 — direct and through trusts. Beneficial is the figure stated on the latest Schedule 13D/G cover page, which can exclude shares the person disclaims and include options exercisable within 60 days, so the two are never added together.

Paper trail

Nothing flagged: every Form 4 inside the two-day window, no pledge footnotes, no SEC correspondence.

3 filings under CIK 0001432820 · captured 2026-09-05 · All filings on EDGAR ↗

On the record with shareholders

Earnings calls

  1. Q2 2026 Sep 1, 2026 William Li argued that NIO has stopped competing on price and started competing on brand, and that this is what makes the margin repair durable rather than cyclical. His evidence was an average transaction price of RMB406,000 for the NIO brand in the June quarter - above Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi on the same registration data - three quarters of ES9 buyers arriving from outside NIO's existing user base, and an ES8 that has not faded in the eleven months since launch. Against that he set the cost side plainly: roughly RMB14,000 a car of input inflation since late last year and another RMB2,000-3,000 still coming, with the company intending to grow gross profit through it. The forward numbers were his rather than the release's: a fourth-quarter target of more than 40,000 vehicles a month, mid-term annual volume growth of 40-50%, and positive operating and free cash flow held through both remaining quarters. Read the call · 10 quotes →
In their own words

Podcasts, interviews & articles

3 recorded appearances

2026

Interview New York Stock Exchange · May 18, 2026 · 7 min

NIO CEO William Li Discusses ‘Major Milestone’ of First Ever Quarterly Profit

Sat on NYSE Live to mark the December quarter, the first profit from operations in the eleven years since he founded the company, and framed it as the payoff from the cost programme rather than a one-off. He tied the next leg to the three-brand structure - NIO, ONVO and firefly - carrying volume rather than price.

Watch or read →

2025

Talk NIO House Oslo · Nov 4, 2025 · 1h 22m

Full Q&A with William Li and Lihong Qin, Nio House Oslo, Norway.

An unedited hour and a half of open questions from European owners, taken alongside co-founder Lihong Qin at the Oslo NIO House. Useful because it is the format where he answers on the European rollout, the swap network and service economics without an investor-relations frame around it.

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Interview AutoXing · Sep 22, 2025 · 3 min

NIO CEO William Li: real winner in China smart EV race to emerge in 10 years

Interviewed straight after NIO Day 2025 in Hangzhou, he argued that China’s smart-EV race has entered its final phase but that it will take another ten years before the real winners are visible - a longer horizon than the quarterly delivery race the market prices him on.

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