Overview. NIO was founded in November 2014 by William Li (Chinese: 李斌; pinyin: Lǐ Bīn), the Chairman of Bitauto and NextEV.After launch, several companies invested in NIO, including Tencent, Temasek, Baidu, Sequoia, Lenovo and TPG.Its first model, the NIO EP9 sports car, debuted the same day the brand was established. [citation needed]In October 2016, NIO announced that it had been given …

