Horizon Robotics
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Last reviewed
Jun 3, 2026
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16 citations
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Source-backed
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v1 · 1,700 words
Add missing citations, update stale details, or suggest a clearer explanation.
Horizon Robotics (Chinese: 地平线; pinyin: Dìpíngxiàn) is a Chinese company that designs artificial-intelligence computing chips and software for the automotive market, principally for advanced driver assistance and autonomous driving. [1] Its flagship products are the Journey (Chinese: 征程, Zhengcheng) series of automotive systems-on-a-chip, built around an in-house neural-network accelerator that the company calls the BPU (Brain Processing Unit), together with the supporting software and a full-stack assisted-driving solution branded Horizon SuperDrive. [2] The company is headquartered in Beijing and listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in October 2024 in one of that year's larger technology offerings. [3]
Horizon Robotics was founded in July 2015 by Yu Kai together with co-founders Huang Chang and Tao Feiwen. [1] Yu Kai is a machine-learning researcher who, from 2012 to 2015, was executive head of Baidu's Institute of Deep Learning (IDL), the first dedicated AI research lab inside a major Chinese internet company. While at Baidu he also helped establish the company's autonomous-driving team and its PaddlePaddle deep-learning framework. [4] Earlier in his career he had directed the media analytics laboratory at NEC Labs America, an early center of work on convolutional neural networks, and he holds a doctorate from the University of Munich. [4]
Yu Kai's stated thesis in leaving Baidu was that AI algorithms and the silicon that runs them should be co-designed, a "software and hardware combined" approach that became Horizon's organizing principle. [4] From the outset the company chose automotive-grade chips, a harder and more tightly regulated target than consumer silicon, as its primary direction, though its early products also reached smart-camera and edge-AI markets. [1]
Horizon raised capital across several large private rounds before its public listing. Intel Capital led a roughly US$100 million Series A-plus round in 2017. [5] In February 2019 the company raised about US$600 million in a Series B round led by SK China and the semiconductor unit SK Hynix, with participation from a number of Chinese automakers and their funds; that round valued Horizon at around US$3 billion. [5][6] Other backers over time included Hillhouse, HongShan (the former Sequoia China), Yunfeng Capital, and several automotive groups such as BYD, Chery and CATL. [1]
The Journey line is Horizon's core product. The first generation, Journey 2, reached mass production in 2019 and delivered more than 4 TOPS (tera-operations per second) of AI compute on a TSMC 28 nm process, aimed at entry-level L2 driver assistance. [1][7] Journey 3, launched in 2020, offered about 5 TOPS on a 16 nm process and targeted highway driving assistance. [1][7] Journey 5, announced in 2021, was a much larger step: it provided 128 TOPS and was built for vision-plus-LiDAR perception in higher-level assisted driving, debuting in the Li Auto L8 Pro in 2022. [7][8]
The current generation, the Journey 6 family, was unveiled at Horizon's product launch event in Beijing on 24 April 2024. [2] It spans a wide range of compute tiers from a single architecture so that one chip family can serve everything from a front-camera ADAS module to full urban navigation-on-pilot. The entry Journey 6B provides 18 TOPS, the mid-range 6E and 6M provide 80 and 128 TOPS, and the flagship Journey 6P provides 560 TOPS. [2][9] The 6P contains about 37 billion transistors on TSMC's 7 nm process, pairs an 18-core CPU rated at roughly 410,000 DMIPS with four Nash BPU cores, and is intended for all-scenario assisted driving; its mass production was scheduled for the third quarter of 2025. [9]
| Chip | Year announced | AI compute | BPU architecture | Process node | Primary use |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Journey 2 | 2019 | 4 TOPS | Bernoulli (1st gen) | TSMC 28 nm | Entry L2 ADAS |
| Journey 3 | 2020 | 5 TOPS | Bernoulli (2nd gen) | TSMC 16 nm | Highway assist |
| Journey 5 | 2021 | 128 TOPS | Bayes | TSMC 16 nm | Vision and LiDAR perception |
| Journey 6B | 2024 | 18 TOPS | Nash | N/A | Front-camera ADAS |
| Journey 6E | 2024 | 80 TOPS | Nash | N/A | Highway NOA |
| Journey 6M | 2024 | 128 TOPS | Nash | N/A | Urban and highway NOA |
| Journey 6P | 2024 | 560 TOPS | Nash | TSMC 7 nm | Full-scenario NOA |
The BPU is Horizon's proprietary neural-network accelerator, conceived as a domain-specific processor for deep-learning inference rather than a general-purpose GPU. [1] Horizon names successive BPU microarchitectures after scientists and mathematicians. The first generation was Bernoulli, used in Journey 2 and (in a second iteration) Journey 3. [7] Journey 5 introduced the Bayes architecture, oriented toward camera and LiDAR perception. [7][8] The Journey 6 series uses the fourth-generation BPU, named Nash, which Horizon designed specifically to run transformer neural networks efficiently, reflecting the shift in autonomous-driving perception toward transformer-based and "BEV" (bird's-eye-view) models. [2][9]
Alongside the silicon, Horizon supplies the software toolchain, perception algorithms and reference designs that let automakers deploy its chips, consistent with the co-design philosophy. [2] At the April 2024 event the company introduced Horizon SuperDrive (HSD), a full-stack assisted-driving system meant to handle urban, highway and parking scenarios, covering the range from active-safety ADAS up to all-scenario navigate-on-pilot. [2] HSD is built on the Journey 6 hardware and an end-to-end neural architecture. [10] Horizon stated that SuperDrive would reach its first mass-produced vehicle in the third quarter of 2025; the company and Chery Automobile said the system would make its production debut on a Chery Exeed model around September 2025. [10][11] Horizon also markets parts of its product range under a "Halo" branding aimed at lower-cost ADAS tiers. [1]
Horizon supplies a large number of Chinese and international automakers. Its Journey chips and solutions have been adopted by brands including Li Auto, BYD, GAC, Chery, Geely, SAIC, Changan and others. [1] As of 31 December 2024 the company reported design wins across more than 310 vehicle models and had delivered roughly 7.7 million product solutions cumulatively. [12] In January 2025 it set a target of shipping more than 10 million chips during 2025. [12]
The most prominent international tie is with the Volkswagen Group. In October 2022 Volkswagen's automotive-software unit CARIAD agreed to form a joint venture with Horizon, with Volkswagen planning to invest about EUR 2.4 billion for roughly a 60 percent stake. [13] The joint venture, named CARIZON (a contraction of CARIAD and Horizon), was formally established in December 2023 and is headquartered in Beijing. [14] CARIZON develops full-stack assisted-driving software built on Horizon's Journey computing platform, targeted at Volkswagen Group battery-electric vehicles for the Chinese market. [13][14]
Horizon Robotics listed on the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on 24 October 2024 under the stock code 9660. [3] It priced its shares at HK$3.99, the top of the marketed range, raising about HK$5.4 billion (roughly US$696 million) before any over-allotment. [3][15] Cornerstone investors subscribed for a combined US$220 million of stock, among them units of Alibaba and Baidu, a fund linked to the Ningbo city government, and a French family office. [3] The offering was heavily oversubscribed, with the retail tranche covered about 33.8 times. [3] On its debut the shares opened at HK$5.12, up about 28 percent, before closing the day at HK$4.10 amid a broad pullback in Hong Kong technology stocks. [3] The deal was the largest technology IPO in Hong Kong in 2024 and the city's second-largest listing of the year overall, after the US$4.6 billion offering by appliance maker Midea Group. [3][15]
In its IPO disclosures and subsequent reporting, Horizon described itself, citing the research firm China Insights Consultancy, as one of the leading suppliers of ADAS and autonomous-driving solutions to Chinese carmakers; it was ranked the second-largest such provider to Chinese OEMs in 2023, with its share rising substantially into 2024. [1][12] By the end of 2024 it held more than 40 percent of the Chinese OEM ADAS solutions market by the company's accounting. [12] These figures measure assisted-driving solutions supplied to domestic automakers rather than the global automotive-chip market, where companies such as NVIDIA, Mobileye and Qualcomm remain major competitors. [16]
Financially, Horizon's revenue grew about 54 percent in 2024 to roughly RMB 2.38 billion, driven by chip and solution shipments, but the company remained unprofitable on an operating basis, reporting an adjusted operating loss of about RMB 1.5 billion for the year as it continued heavy spending on research and development. [16] The company's broad strategy positions it as a domestic alternative to foreign autonomous-driving chip suppliers within China's automotive industry. [16]