BYD Company: From Battery Startup to Global Auto Giant

A profile of BYD Company — the Shenzhen-headquartered group that grew out of a 1995 battery venture into a conglomerate building millions of cars a year, with businesses spanning electronics, semiconductors and even monorail transit.

BYD Company Limited traces its origins to February 1995, when it was set up in Shenzhen as a battery manufacturer originally named Shenzhen BYD Battery Company. Co-founders Wang Chuanfu and Lu Xiangyang remain the two largest individual shareholders, with stakes of roughly 16.9% and 13.0% respectively, and the group today lists on both the Hong Kong and Shenzhen stock exchanges.

Three decades on, it has become a sprawling conglomerate. Its automotive arm, BYD Auto, turned out 4.60 million vehicles in 2025, while the group produced 155.7 GWh of electric-vehicle batteries in 2024. Revenue reached about ¥804 billion (roughly US$113 billion) in 2025 with net income of ¥32.6 billion, and the workforce had grown to nearly 870,000 people by December 2025.

Beyond carmaking, the portfolio stretches across rechargeable batteries, photovoltaic systems, handsets and components, semiconductors, forklifts and the SkyRail monorail business. Supporting units include BYD Electronics, BYD Semiconductor and the FinDreams component empire, which covers everything from batteries and powertrains to precision parts. Wang Chuanfu leads the company as chairman and CEO, with Stella Li as executive vice president and Wolfgang Egger as chief design officer.