Abu Dhabi's capital will strengthen NIO's balance sheet and help build long-term competitiveness, said NIO Chairman William Li. Li, who founded NIO in 2014, is worth $1.4 billion on the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List today. The company, which ranked No. 1,915 on the Forbes Global 2000 list of the world's top publicly traded business unveiled earlier this month, went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2018. (See related post here .)