The archive · Hardware & Devices · Strategic decision · 2015–2024
Horizon Robotics (地平线) bets Chinese cars run on its ADAS chips; $696M HK IPO tops 2024
Ex-Baidu scientist Yu Kai's nine-year bet that Chinese automakers would buy dedicated ADAS compute paid off with 2024's biggest HK tech IPO.
Horizon Robotics (地平线)
What the business is
Sells Journey (征程) automotive computing chips and a full-stack ADAS/autonomous-driving software platform to carmakers, covering everything from lane keeping to city NOA.
Starting capital：Over $3.4B raised pre-IPO from BYD, CATL, Intel, SAIC, GAC, Great Wall, FAW, Sequoia and Hillhouse, among others
How it started
Yu Kai, a Baidu Research vice president, founded Horizon in Beijing in July 2015, betting AI inference would move from the cloud into vehicles; automakers and Intel backed the idea early, and the company raised over $3.4B before the IPO.
What happened
Journey chips went into Changan, Roewe and Li Auto models from 2019; by 2024-09-30 its hardware-software solutions were adopted by 27 OEMs (42 brands) with 290 model designations and 152 models in SOP. It priced its October 2024 Hong Kong IPO at the top of the range, raising HK$5.4B with Alibaba, Baidu and CMA CGM as cornerstone investors.
How it ended up
Still running and public; shares closed +2.8% on debut day and revenue kept climbing — FY2025 revenue reached RMB 3.76B (+57.7% YoY) and H1 2026 revenue grew 119.9% YoY.
Background
Horizon Robotics (地平线) is a Chinese provider of automotive computing chips, Journey (征程), and full-stack ADAS and autonomous-driving software, founded in Beijing in July 2015 by Yu Kai (余凯), a former Baidu Research vice president. The founding bet was that AI inference would move from the cloud into vehicles, and that carmakers would rather buy a dedicated compute-plus-software platform than build one from scratch.
The wedge was openness: instead of picking one customer or building its own car, Horizon sold chips and software to every OEM, with Journey 2/3/5/6 shipping from 2019 in Changan, Roewe and Li Auto models. Investors including Intel, SAIC, GAC, Great Wall, BYD, FAW, CATL, Sequoia and Hillhouse put more than $3.4B into the company before its IPO.
By 2024-09-30, 27 OEMs (42 brands) had adopted Horizon's solutions across 290 model designations, with 152 models in production. The company then priced its Hong Kong IPO at the top of the range, raising HK$5.4B (~$696M) — 2024's biggest technology IPO in Hong Kong — and opened 28.3% higher on 2024-10-24 with the retail tranche 33.8x oversubscribed.
The bet has kept paying off since: FY2024 revenue was RMB 2.38B (+53.6% YoY), FY2025 revenue reached RMB 3.76B (+57.7%), and H1 2026 revenue grew 119.9% YoY. Horizon now competes with Nvidia's Drive platform and with in-house stacks built by leading EV makers.
What has to be true
- The bet targeted a structural shift — cars becoming software-defined — rather than a fad, so demand arrived even when individual chip programs were slow.
- Openness was the wedge: selling chips plus software to every OEM instead of building its own car meant Horizon never competed with its customers.
- The IPO numbers show the scale of the win: 2024's biggest HK tech IPO, 33.8x retail oversubscription, and revenue that kept growing 50%+ per year.
- Founder credibility and strategic investors (Intel plus major Chinese automakers) let a nine-year, capital-heavy bet keep getting funded.
What can be applied
Pick the bottleneck a whole industry must pay to remove: Horizon bet on automotive compute years before Chinese ADAS took off, and its open-platform stance let carmakers buy instead of build.
Aftermath
As of 2026-09-02 Horizon trades on HKEX as 9660.HK with a market cap around HK$67B and 2,391 employees. FY2025 revenue reached RMB 3.76B (+57.7% YoY) and H1 2026 revenue hit RMB 2.05B (+119.9% YoY). The company continues to push its Journey 6 chip family and the Horizon SuperDrive full-stack solution, expanding beyond the 27 OEMs and 290 models it had signed by late 2024, while facing direct competition from Nvidia's Drive platform and in-house stacks from leading EV makers.
Sources
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