Rockets Capital, co-founded by the former COO of Hony Capital in conjunction with the senior leadership of XPeng Inc. (XPeng), has reached a first close of over USD 200m in capital commitments on its debut fund with an overall target of USD 500m. The fund will focus on venture and growth stage investments and leverage the investment team's extensive industry network to access proprietary deal sourcing opportunities in the Smart Electric Vehicle (EV) industry value chain and the related ecosystem.
XPeng is a leading Chinese Smart EV company that designs, develops, manufactures and markets Smart EVs with industry leading full-stack proprietary software capability. XPeng's vehicle delivery was ranked first among China's emerging pure-play EV companies in 2021.
As the fund's Cayman counsel, our funds team assisted on the formation of Rockets Capital and the launch of the fund which, in addition to XPeng as the strategic anchor investor, has attracted a number of leading institutional investors, such as IDG Capital, eGarden, Sequoia China, 5Y Capital, and GGV Capital.
The transaction was led by Partner Marc Parrott, assisted by Counsel Charlotte Yeung Fletcher and Legal Manager Kaile Yang.
Appleby is well-known for its global investment funds practice and has a strong reputation in Hong Kong advising on various specialist fund structures and particularly on Cayman funds. Our full service funds team practices Bermuda, British Virgin Islands and Cayman Islands law, and is fluent in Cantonese, English and Mandarin.