Baillie Gifford & Co., the second-biggest shareholder of Tesla stock, has taken an interest in a Nio, the Chinese electric vehicle automaker that recently became a publicly traded company.
Baillie Gifford now owns an 11.44% stake in Nio, according to a regulatory filing posted Tuesday. The company disclosed that it had purchased 85.3 million shares, which were valued at about $515 million as of the close of trading Monday.
Baillie Gifford is the largest outside shareholder of Tesla stock. CEO Elon Musk, Tesla’s largest shareholder, own about 20% of the company.
The filing pushed shares of Nio closed at $7.39, up from its opening of $6.19 this morning. Shares are up another 7% in after-hours trading and continuing to climb.
Nio raised $1 billion when it debuted on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday last month.
Nio wants to become the Tesla of China — and beyond. The company has operations in the U.S., UK and Germany, although it only sells its ES8 vehicle in China. The 7-seater ES8 SUV is priced at 448,000 RMB, or around $65,000. That’s cheaper than Tesla’s vehicles, especially since new, higher import tariffs have driven up the price of its Model X SUV and Model S sedan.
Those tariffs, plus other costs like shipping Tesla vehicles overseas, is pushing the U.S. automaker to accelerate its China factory plans.