On October 8, Horizon Robotics passed the Hong Kong Stock Exchange hearing, and its IPO entered the countdown stage.

Horizon Robotics is a supplier of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and advanced driverless (AD) solutions for passenger vehicles, with revenue mainly derived from automotive solutions, including product solutions, licensing, and service businesses.

According to data from Cintell, based on the total installed capacity of solutions in 2023 and the first half of 2024, Horizon ranks fourth among all providers of advanced driver assistance systems and advanced driverless solutions in China. As of September 30, Horizon's hardware-software integrated solutions have been adopted by 27 OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) and installed in 290 models.

Founded in 2015, Horizon is headquartered in Haidian District, Beijing, with Yu Kai as its founder and CEO.

Yu Kai is from Nanchang, born in November 1976. He graduated from the Affiliated High School of Jiangxi Normal University in 1994 and was admitted to the College of Electronic Science and Engineering at Nanjing University the same year. When Yu Kai was a junior, he met Professor Xu Boling, a renowned expert in acoustic audio, who introduced him to research on artificial neural networks. Fascinated by this field, Yu Kai continued to delve into it. In 1999, during his graduate studies, his first published paper was also about neural networks, and his master's thesis focused on solving the cocktail party effect in speech recognition using artificial neural networks.

After completing his graduate studies in 2000, Yu Kai went to Germany for further studies and obtained a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Munich, Germany, in 2004.

After obtaining his Ph.D., Yu Kai first worked as a researcher at the R&D Center of Siemens in Germany. From 2006 to 2012, he served as the director of the Media Lab at NEC Research Institutes America. Abroad, Yu Kai "focused mainly on research and writing papers, publishing over 100 papers. When he returned to China, he was likely one of the top Chinese scholars in the field of artificial intelligence in terms of paper citation rates." In 2010, Yu Kai led NEC Research Institutes' research team to win the first ImageNet competition (known as the Olympic Games of deep learning and artificial intelligence).

In 2012, Yu Kai returned to China and served as the Senior Director of Baidu's Multimedia Department and Image Search Product Department, the Executive Deputy Dean of Baidu's Deep Learning Research Institute, and the Executive Dean of Baidu Research from 2012 to 2015.

In 2015, Yu Kai founded Horizon Robotics to develop automotive-grade chips for autonomous driving. At the time, it was the first company in China to enter the field of deep neural network chips through software algorithms and was also the earliest enterprise in China to develop dedicated chips for deep neural networks.

Since its inception, Horizon has received multiple investments, raising a cumulative total of over US$3.4 billion (approximately RMB 24 billion). After completing its Series D funding round on December 28, 2023, its valuation reached US$8.71 billion (approximately RMB 61.6 billion).

Horizon's investors include industry capital and well-known investment institutions such as SAIC Motor, GAC Group, CATL, BYD, Sunny Optical, Hillhouse Capital, Sequoia Capital, Yunfeng Capital, Matrix Partners China, and Intel, covering the upstream and downstream of the automotive supply chain.

Among them, (before the IPO), Yu Kai personally held a 14.85% stake, SAIC Motor held an 8.78% stake, Hillhouse Capital held a 3.24% stake, Sequoia Capital held a 2.36% stake, Intel Capital held a 1.36% stake, and BYD held a 0.11% stake.

According to the prospectus, Horizon's revenue for 2021-2023 and the first half of 2024 (hereinafter referred to as the "reporting period") was RMB 467 million, RMB 906 million, RMB 1.552 billion, and RMB 935 million, respectively. The revenue for the first half of this year, at RMB 935 million, increased by 151.6% year-on-year.

During the reporting period, Horizon's operating losses were RMB 1.335 billion, RMB 2.132 billion, RMB 2.03 billion, and RMB 1.105 billion, respectively. The net losses were RMB 2.064 billion, RMB 8.72 billion, RMB 6.739 billion, and RMB 5.098 billion, respectively, with a cumulative net loss of over RMB 22.6 billion over three and a half years. Horizon attributed its losses primarily to continuous investment in research and development.

The large pie of autonomous driving is too tempting, and technology investment is necessary to occupy a high ground. According to data from Cintell, by 2030, the share of advanced driverless solutions in driving automation solutions will exceed 60%. It is expected that by 2027, nearly half of the driving automation solutions deployed in passenger vehicles in China will be advanced driverless solutions, and by 2030, this proportion will further increase to over 80%.

This article does not constitute investment advice. This article also references content from CNR Finance, Shanghai Securities News, the official website of Nanjing University, and Yu Kai's speech at the Matrix Partners China Annual Meeting, among others, for which we express our gratitude. The cover image is from the company's official website.