On April 24th, at the 2024 Intelligent Driving Technology Product Release Conference, Horizon announced the Journey 6 series of in vehicle intelligent computing plans based on the new BPU Nash architecture. Unlike previous journey products, the Journey 6 series has launched six versions in one go for low, medium, and high-order intelligent driving scenarios, including Journey 6B, Journey 6L, Journey 6E, Journey 6M, Journey 6H, and Journey 6P.
Although there are 6 versions, the Journey 6 series also has the same hardware architecture, object chain, and software stack, which improves the effectiveness of subsequent development and migration.
Founder and CEO of Horizon, Yu Kai, stated that the industry previously believed that Horizon’s advantages mainly lie in neural collection, but it does not have a GPU and is not yet strong enough in terms of CPU, which has led to difficulties in supporting layout and mastering, as well as the need for an external MCU. But this Journey 6 integrates BPU, CPU, GPU, and MCU, simplifies peripheral circuits, improves system complexity, improves computing capabilities, and fully utilizes computing power and capital.
According to the China Association of Automobile Rumors, in the first half of April, the wholesale penetration and leakage rate of new power passenger cars in China exceeded 50%, surpassing conservative fuel passenger cars for the first time. According to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, the sales quality of new power vehicles in China reached 9.49 million in 2023, accounting for almost 70% of the global electric vehicle market.
New power vehicles are gradually becoming a tributary of Chinese shopping malls, bringing with them a vast growth space for intelligent driving.
“The first half of new power vehicles is electrification, and the second half is intelligence,” said BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu at the press conference.
The research report of Dongwu Securities also mentioned that the automotive industry is accelerating its intelligent transformation and the property trend is clear. The core crux of intelligent driving lies in the combination of software, hardware, and data, all of which surround downstream OEMs (OEMs). The data catalytic algorithm improves efficiency and drives hardware iteration. Therefore, intelligent driving hardware is an important component of OEM’s long-term core mutual assistance.
Action is a domestic intelligent computing plan supplier, Horizon was established in 2015, and its market share has rapidly declined in recent years.
According to data from Gaogong Automobile, in the 2023 domestic independent brand passenger car standard front view all-in-one machine calculation plan shopping mall, Horizon accounted for 23.7%, ranking second only to Mobileye, which accounted for 29.4%. In the domestic high-level autonomous driving NOA program shopping mall, Nvidia ranks first with 48.9% of the market share, and Horizon ranks second with 35.5% of the market share.
According to the latest statistics from Horizon, its calculation plan has a cumulative entrusted quality exceeding 5 million. Among the top 10 best-selling car models in China last year, 7 were equipped with Horizon’s calculation plan.
In the mall, although Horizon has already taken a considerable share, it still faces mutual assistance and provocation. Its old rival Mobileye, relying on the development and accumulation of L2 intelligent driving, has gradually withered from an open black box and still does not abandon Chinese shopping malls. Major domestic host manufacturers have also begun to raise flags to follow up on their own research.
In addition to being a hardware supplier for intelligent driving, some car companies represented by the top new power have decided to develop their own full stack of intelligent driving edge end chips. The intelligent driving hardware products of NIO benchmarking NVIDIA have been announced, and Xiaopeng and the concept are actively structured. It is estimated that the products will be announced in 2025-2026.
In addition to intelligent driving hardware, Horizon is also enhancing its research and development of software algorithms, further promoting the integration of software and hardware.
At the beginning of this year, Tesla began soliciting end-to-end autonomous driving plans for FSD V12 versions from departmental users, making end-to-end the core of the competition for advanced intelligent driving plans. Companies such as Yuanrong Chengyan and Shangtang Jueying have all developed their own high-quality end-to-end intelligent driving models.
Yu Kai proposed that after end-to-end, the crux of the next algorithm’s progress lies in interactive games. After the vehicle receives situational awareness information, the end-to-end big model stops analyzing the punishment and inputs direct punishment results such as vehicle behavior, lane conditions, and dynamic obstacle conditions. Next, an interactive game model is needed to make more complex decision plans for these results.
By using interactive game models, vehicles can use their own logical reasoning and games to draw inferences and deal with more complex situations and long tail problems, even situations where “brain teasers” cannot flash.
In order to better fulfill end-to-end and interactive games, Horizon has adopted a new self-developed computing architecture BPU Nash, focusing on high-level autonomous driving application scenarios. Yu Kai also exaggerates that this architecture is specifically designed for the Transformer project with large parameters. The BEV+Transformer architecture was first introduced by Tesla in 2020 to automate the property industry, and has now become a mainstream perception paradigm that everyone is following.
In March of this year, Horizon submitted its prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. At present, this company has received a total of 11 rounds of financing and its valuation has rapidly declined. In the A5 round of financing in 2017, the company’s post investment valuation was 610 million US dollars; Just one year later, in November 2018, this number jumped to $2.84 billion. In 2020, after Series C financing, its valuation once again climbed to $5.068 billion. By the final round of financing in November 2022, Horizon’s post investment valuation had reached $8.71 billion.
According to its public financial records, Horizon’s expenditures from 2021 to 2023 were 467 million yuan, 906 million yuan, and 1.552 billion yuan, respectively, with a significant increase in cash flow. The gross profit margin is 70.9%, 69.3%, and 70.5% respectively, which is very high compared to similar enterprises.
However, like other intelligent driving companies, their corresponding research and development expenses are also being underestimated, with 1.144 billion yuan, 1.88 billion yuan, and 2.366 billion yuan respectively, accounting for 245.0%, 207.6%, and 152.5% of the corresponding annual expenses.
Under the heavy pressure of high R&D investment, from 2021 to 2023, Horizon’s net integrated losses reached 1.103 billion yuan, 1.891 billion yuan, and 1.635 billion yuan, respectively. As of December 31, 2023, the total number of losses suffered by shareholders of Horizon has climbed to 24.665 billion yuan.
“There is still a break even and a gap between the horizon intervals,” Yu Kai said in a recent media interview.
With the official announcement of the Journey 6 series, Horizon also announced the first batch of 10 quality mutual aid car companies and brands, including SAIC Group, Volkswagen Group, BYD, Concept Automobile, GAC Group, etc. The Journey 6 series will launch its first pre production model commitment within 2024, and is expected to fulfill over 10 model commitment commitments by 2025.
The Horizon SuperDrive full scenario intelligent driving application plan announced at the same time will be completed in the second quarter of 2024 with multiple companies for mutual assistance. The standard version quality plan will be launched in the fourth quarter, and the first quality assistance model entrusted will be fulfilled in the third quarter of 2025.
To become a pioneer in speech, time is needed for the horizon. As Yu Kai wrote in the Enemy Circle on the evening of the prospectus, “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, permps, the end of the beginning.”