Text｜Anqi Li and Qin Li
Editor｜Su Jianxun
Another self-driving chip startup has capital moves.
36 Krypton learned from people familiar with the matter that recently, the self-driving chip company “Huixi Smart”, co-founded by former NIO executive Zhang Jianyong, has recently completed an angel+ round of financing of over US$50 million, with a project valuation of US$200 million , led by Xiaomi Strategy, China Automobile Investment, Kaihui Fund, Qiji Chuangtan, GSR Venture Capital and other institutions also followed up the investment.
Judging from industry and commerce information, Xiaomi’s lead investment comes from strategic direct investment, and Huixi Smart and Xiaomi’s strategic synergy also means more. It is worth mentioning that Weilai Capital has already appeared in the angel round financing of Huixi Intelligence in June this year. Xiaomi and Weilai have many overlaps in the layout of the industrial chain. In addition to Huixi Smart, the two have jointly invested in Black Sesame and Weilan New Energy.
Although it has not been officially announced, the momentum of Huixi Smart cannot be underestimated. Founded in April 2022, it is a self-driving chip developer focusing on large computing power, co-founded by Xu Ningyi, He Guanghui, and Zhang Jianyong.
It is understood that the founder Xu Ningyi graduated from Tsinghua University with a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree. He is a tenured professor of Shanghai Jiaotong University. Before that, he was the head of the hardware computing group of Microsoft Asia Research Institute, the chief architect of Baidu’s chip department, and the CEO of AI computing architecture array intelligence; Guanghui graduated from Tsinghua University and is currently a professor at the Department of Micro-Nano Electronics at Shanghai Jiaotong University; Zhang Jianyong is the vice president of NIO’s autonomous driving. He formed NIO’s earliest algorithm development team and reported directly to Li Bin.
An industry insider close to Huixi Intelligent told 36 Krypton that Huixi Intelligent aims at autonomous driving chips with a large computing power of more than 200 Tops, mainly for L2++ and above automatic driving scenarios. Its first chip will use a 7nm process and is expected to be mass-produced in 2024.
At present, the intelligentization of automobiles has become a certain trend. Intelligent driving is gradually evolving to a higher level, which has higher requirements for the computing power of vehicle chips. There is a view in the industry that the chip computing power required for L4-level autonomous driving is 500-1000 Tops.
This also drives domestic and foreign chip companies to set off a computing power competition: Nvidia’s single Orin chip has a computing power of 256 Tops, Tesla’s current FSD chip has a computing power of 72 Tops, and the performance of its next-generation products has increased by 3 times; domestic chip players Huawei The computing power of MDC 610 is 200 Tops, and the computing power of Horizon Journey 5 is 128 Tops.
Compared with the start-up time of the last batch of domestic auto chip companies, it is not too early for Huixi Smart to enter the game. However, the above-mentioned industry insiders said that domestic mid-end intelligent driving chip products are quite rich, but in the field of high-computing chips, the range that OEMs can choose is not particularly wide.
This may also be the reason why Huixi Smart entered the field of computing power above 200 Tops.
But the more attractive and blank the market is, the more difficult it is. After all, not to mention the billions of investment required for an autonomous driving chip from R&D, tape-out to testing, it will take 3-4 years. The previous batch of chip start-up companies almost all started from low-power chips, and the cost and space for trial and error were relatively large. Huixi Intelligent directly cuts in from the large computing power, and if the time point of its mass production in 2024 remains unchanged, then the time window left for Huixi Intelligent to try and make mistakes will be even shorter.
Perhaps because of the tight time for mass production, Huixi Intelligence recruited Zhang Jianyong, the former VP of autonomous driving of Weilai Automobile, to jointly start a business. Mass production of model features. But the premise of engineering efficiency is based on a mass-produced chip.
At present, the automotive chip market is still hot, including OEMs such as BYD, Weilai, Ideal, Xiaopeng, and Leapmotor, all of which are developing their own chips. This competition involving huge investment and talent competition is far from over. If Huixi Smart wants to stand out, it still needs to overcome many obstacles.
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