NIO CEO William Li Outlines Path to Sustained Profitability and R&D Efficiency in 2026 Outlook

On February 9, 2026, NIO held an internal all-hands meeting where founder, chairman, and CEO William Li reviewed the company’s performance in 2025 and shared strategic objectives for 2026. According to a report by LatePost Auto, the meeting highlighted NIO’s transition into a "new harvest period" following years of heavy investment in technology and infrastructure. The session served as both a victory lap for a strong second half of 2025 and a directive to the workforce to prioritize operational efficiency to secure long-term financial health.

The address is particularly significant as the premium electric vehicle manufacturer approaches a critical financial inflection point. After delivering its one millionth mass-produced vehicle in January 2026, NIO issued a fourth-quarter profit forecast for 2025, expecting a non-GAAP operating profit between RMB 700 million (US$97 million) and RMB 1.2 billion (US$167 million). Li emphasized that quarterly profitability is merely a starting point, urging the company to maintain its technological lead while perfecting its "Core Business Unit" (CBU) mechanism to maximize the impact of its capital expenditures in a hyper-competitive market.

The main content of Li Bin's speech on that day is as follows:

Dear colleagues,

Happy New Year! I just sent each of you a red envelope of 888 points. I want to express my special gratitude to all of you for your relentless efforts and dedication over the past year. Thank you.

2025 was an extraordinary year for NIO, and a memorable one for every colleague working here. Everyone pushed themselves hard, always thinking about what they could do for the company and help it survive. I believe this experience has been deeply meaningful for each of us. As I have said on many occasions last year: "A crisis is when we grow our capabilities." I am confident that when most of our colleagues look back on the past year, they will feel that they have indeed grown stronger.

Let me briefly review the achievements we have made in the past year.

First, our all-new NIO ES8 delivered 60,000 units in just 134 days. In December last year, the all-new ES8 not only won the sales champion of large SUVs regardless of price range and energy form, but also claimed the title of best-selling model above 400,000 RMB, regardless of energy form and body type. This achievement was no easy feat and made a huge contribution to the company's fourth-quarter profitability.

At the same time, let's not forget that the best-selling pure electric three-row SUV in 2025 was the Leapmotor L90. The company's overall momentum began to rebound with the successful launch and market entry of the L90, which delivered over 10,000 units for three consecutive months.

Another pleasant surprise last year was the Firefly. In December, the Firefly held a 61% market share in the entire premium small car segment. The Firefly is one of the few models in recent years that has sold more and more after its launch. In today's market, new cars often face a "death valley of new car effect"—peaking at launch and then struggling to maintain momentum. Even the most popular models face this challenge. However, the Firefly entered a hot-selling period and continued to sell even better.

This shows that we got the product right, the brand positioning right, the marketing right, and our internal collaboration was excellent. Moreover, the Firefly is our leading brand for entering the global market. In China, we are "NIO Le Ying," and globally, we are "Ying Le Lai."

What lies behind these best-selling models? It is the firm and sustained investment in underlying technology over the past decade, which is now bearing fruit. In 2025, our "New Three Core Components"—the Shenji 9031 smart chip, Tianqiu Full-domain Operating System, and Tianxing Intelligent Chassis—began to be deployed in vehicles. The NIO ET9, which we started delivering in March last year, remains the most technologically advanced car in the world to this day.

Why can the ET9 maintain its leadership? To a large extent, it is attributed to our self-developed Shenji NX9031, the world's first 5nm automotive-grade smart driving chip. For those familiar with the chip industry, you know that mass-producing this chip, deploying it in vehicles, and running it through the entire value chain is an achievement we can be proud of. Our chip team overcame numerous difficulties in the past few years.

It was also no easy task for our self-developed vehicle operating system to fully integrate all vehicle domains. Integrating so many intelligent hardware and software components on the vehicle while ensuring safety and reliability presented extremely high challenges. Without our company's flat 12-layer full-stack self-developed R&D mechanism and the efficient collaboration of everyone, this would have been impossible. The fact that we were able to integrate them into a harmonious "symphony" in a relatively short time speaks volumes about the high level of our R&D colleagues and the excellent cross-departmental collaboration.

Then there is our intelligent chassis. Our fully active suspension and steer-by-wire systems are now being followed by the industry. We were able to mass-produce them first in March last year, maintaining a leading position for over a year and also contributing to the establishment of industry standards such as steer-by-wire.

Battery Swapping Is a "Friend of Time"—Business Model Has Been Validated.
From a delivery perspective, we also achieved many milestones. The company's annual sales volume increased by 47% year-on-year, with a growth rate of over 70% in the second half of the year. We have entered the third cycle of the company's development.

Recently, the company has reached several important milestones:

On January 5 this year, our 1 millionth mass-produced vehicle rolled off the production line. What makes NIO's 1 million units different from others? We are a pure electric 1 million, a 1 million in the high-end market, and more importantly, every single one of our vehicles is developed from a clean sheet, an original product built on NIO's 12-layer full-stack self-developed technology. This 1 million units is a high-quality 1 million.

The second milestone was on February 6 at 22:33:18, when NIO completed its 100 millionth battery swap service. That day, I spent 5 hours reviewing the entire process of how we grew our battery swap service to 100 million swaps—from the internal efforts of colleagues, the support of external partners, to the participation of users. The completion of 100 million battery swaps not only proves that our pure electric battery swap technical route is viable, but also that our business model is validated. "Charging is more convenient than refueling" is no longer just an imagination, but gradually becoming a reality. The further we go down the path of battery swapping, the more confident we become.

We currently have 3,729 battery swap stations. We plan to build 1,000 more this year, and by the end of the year, we will have at least 4,600 stations. We see the significance and value of battery swapping for users, and we are also acutely aware of its value for the company's commercial success—not just short-term commercial success, but long-term commercial success. As an energy service system, battery swapping indeed solves the systemic issues of battery and vehicle lifespan in the smart electric vehicle industry.

Please believe that battery swapping is a friend of time. As time goes by, its importance, user value, commercial value, and social value will become increasingly evident. This is our second recent milestone.

The third milestone was on February 9, when we released our 2025 annual performance forecast. This is based on the regulatory requirements of the capital market. Although our official financial report has not yet been released, this information needs to be disclosed to the market as required by regulators. We achieved profitability in the fourth quarter, both in terms of Non-GAAP and GAAP metrics.

We need to maintain sales growth, ensure sustained investment in research and development projects, and keep service satisfaction at a relatively high level. Under these conditions, achieving profitability seemed like an impossible task to many. I am deeply grateful to all our colleagues for completing the goals we set. Thank you again.

Profitability Is Just the Starting Point—We Must Continue to Be Diligent, Thrifty, and Focused on Results.
Starting from the second half of last year, we entered the third stage of the company's development.

The first stage of NIO was from the company's establishment to 2021. From the delivery of our first vehicle in 2018 to 2021, even through difficult times like 2019, we still maintained 100% annual growth.

The second cycle was from 2022 to the first half of last year. During this cycle, although our sales volume did not meet expectations, we still maintained over 30% annual growth. In the automotive industry, it is already very hard to avoid a sales decline; as long as we maintain annual growth, we have hope.

Our investment in R&D and infrastructure during the second cycle, as well as the firm implementation of organizational reforms, laid the foundation for our third development stage and supported our entry into a new harvest period.

This year, we will focus on the following key tasks:

First, continue to invest heavily in technology and product R&D. Under the constraint of limited resources, we must not affect the competitiveness of R&D or products. We need to improve R&D efficiency, spend money on the right things, and not waste a single penny on the wrong things. We must be ruthless in our spending. Every R&D project must clearly define the value it can create for users. Many excellent R&D projects emerge from this process. Funds are limited, so where should we allocate them? How do we spend them on high-output areas? How do we spend them on areas that deliver high user value? The process of clarifying these questions is how we grow our capabilities.

Over the past year, I have had a profound realization: spending more money does not necessarily lead to better results. Many things are accomplished with less money, and doing more with less is often the key to success. In the past, we often pursued things that seemed conceptually correct without prioritizing, without detailed analysis, and without carefully calculating the return on investment. This is unacceptable. Therefore, we must achieve the highest efficiency and output with a given investment. We must maintain technological and product leadership by improving R&D efficiency to achieve this.

Second, we will continue to build out our battery swap infrastructure and sales service network. We will continue to build 1,000 battery swap stations this year, and the expansion of the charging network will also continue. Our门店 will continue to penetrate deeper into the market. Of course, we must focus on quality, not just peak numbers or user volume, not just water flow. We must pursue sustainable development and have clear priorities.

Third, continue to promote the full-stack organizational reform centered on user value creation. In the past two years, the entire company has focused on delivery capability and full-stack operation, and the company's capabilities have significantly improved. I now attach great importance to operation and detail-oriented work. When you treat operation as a matter of honor rather than a tedious task, your mindset will be completely different.

What is the core of our work? It is how to achieve the most with the least resources. If we can achieve the most with the least, that is our real capability.

Next, we will continue to fully implement the CBU mechanism. In the past, we could only make "concept cars," but now we will continue to promote this, ensuring that every R&D project and every production vehicle can generate positive returns.

After achieving this, from the perspective of revenue and commercial targets, while ensuring user satisfaction, if we can maintain 40% to 50% annual growth, by 2035, we will have 5 million vehicles on the road. Moreover, our 5 million vehicles will have higher value than those of other automakers, not just because our unit price is higher, but also because of our business model.

Our non-vehicle business revenue in the first quarter of last year was 2.59 billion RMB, and our non-vehicle business profit was 1.9 billion RMB. Everyone, think about this: when we have 200,000 to 300,000 vehicles on the road, what will our non-vehicle business revenue be? In our business model, user relationships are our most important asset. Everyone must work with a long-term mindset and treat time as our friend.

2025 was an extraordinary year for NIO, and a memorable one for every colleague working here. Looking ahead, our goal this year is to achieve annual Non-GAAP profitability. This is not an easy task, and we must not take it for granted. Reasonable profits are the foundation of our sustainable development, and we must achieve this goal. We did it last year, and we must do it again this year.

Let me briefly review the achievements we have made in the past year. I believe that with the joint efforts of everyone, as long as we make a little more progress every day, we will have the confidence to achieve our goals.