<img src="https://imageproxy.pbkrs.com/https://wpimg-wscn.awtmt.com/d00c075d-6b82-4bfa-a1c1-522b755dc6df.png?x-oss-process=image/auto-orient,1/interlace,1/resize,w_1440,h_1440/quality,q_95/format,jpg" alt="" original-src="https://imageproxy.pbkrs.com/https://wpimg-wscn.awtmt.com/d00c075d-6b82-4bfa-a1c1-522b755dc6df.png"/>
Author | Chai Xuchen
Editor | Zhou Zhiyu
In recent years, the industry has debated who can deliver NOA, who can perfect end-to-end systems, and whose urban navigation resembles human driving most closely. In the coming years, the more critical question may become: Who can make users unable to live without it.
On April 11, 2026, Yu Kai, founder and CEO of HORIZONROBOT-W, made a judgment at the High-Level Forum on Intelligent Electric Vehicle Development: By the Spring Festival of 2026, the proportion of intelligent driving mileage in vehicles equipped with the HSD system had already exceeded 40%; once the critical threshold of 50% is breached, user dependence on intelligent driving will become irreversible.
In his view, this is akin to the inflection point when mobile phones transitioned from feature phones to smartphones. When users spend the majority of their driving time under the control of the system, intelligent driving will no longer be merely a selling point but will become a standard feature. Whoever masters this capability stands a chance to become the core of the next round of the automotive supply chain.
<h2>Overtaking</h2>
Tesla once defined the first half of the global intelligent driving era.
The significance of FSD lies not only in enabling automatic lane changes and parking but in convincing consumers that cars can evolve continuously like smartphones through software updates. This allowed Tesla to command a valuation premium far exceeding that of traditional automakers.
However, industry insiders believe Tesla's lead rests on two premises: the world's largest data loop and the absence of true competitors for an extended period. Both premises are now weakening.
In the Chinese market, Tesla still retains brand appeal, but the local competitive landscape has shifted.
&#34;Here we have fierce price competition, complex road environments, high-frequency model iterations, and a user base eager to try new things. The penetration speed of intelligent driving in China has clearly outpaced most global markets,&#34; an intelligent driving practitioner told Wall Street Journal.
In their view, the true beneficiaries may not necessarily be the vehicle manufacturers but rather the &#34;shovel sellers.&#34;
Yu Kai revealed that by August 2025, HORIZONROBOT-W had cumulatively delivered 10 million assisted driving systems, with 4 million units delivered in the single year prior alone. This demonstrates that HORIZONROBOT-W has crossed the common hurdle faced by Chinese tech companies: completing the closed loop from technological research and development to productization and large-scale commercial validation.
Financial reports disclosed in March 2026 showed that HORIZONROBOT-W achieved revenue of 3.76 billion yuan in 2025, a year-over-year increase of 57.7%. Although its three major expenses also rose simultaneously, Yu Kai did not shy away from the reality of heavy spending, stating directly that the company is continuously increasing R&amp;D investment, with annual R&amp;D expenses reaching 5.153 billion yuan, focused on personnel, cloud computing power, and technical service procurement.
Converted, for every 1 yuan of revenue earned, 1.37 yuan was spent on R&amp;D. At this pace, HORIZONROBOT-W does not have much time left to validate its business model.
HORIZONROBOT-W's core chip is HSD.
Yu Kai stated that HSD is the company's core product for winning the urban intelligent driving battle and the technical foundation for higher-level autonomous driving. The system entered mass production in November 2025, landing first in the mainstream vehicle market priced around 150,000 yuan. Within just eight weeks of launch, shipments exceeded 25,000 units. By the end of last year, HSD had secured over 20 designated vehicle models, with expected shipments reaching 400,000 units in 2026.
This proves that high-level intelligent driving is shedding its exclusive association with premium vehicles and beginning to penetrate the mass consumer segment.
An executive from a new force automaker pointed out to Wall Street Journal that the industry previously assumed high-level assisted driving belonged exclusively to vehicles priced above 300,000 yuan as a supplementary configuration. Now, it is appearing in the 150,000-yuan class market, and intelligent driving is gradually acquiring the conditions for widespread adoption.
Yu Kai proposed raising the city MPI (miles per intervention) by tenfold this year, reaching several hundred kilometers. &#34;If we achieve this target, we will surpass Tesla.&#34;
It is worth noting that Tesla operates as a single-brand closed loop, whereas HORIZONROBOT-W is a platform player. Its system can be installed across multiple automakers and various price segments. Every cooperative vehicle sold helps it collect data, train models, and improve algorithms. The fiercer the competition among automakers, the stronger the platform becomes.
This is why HORIZONROBOT-W's software and service revenue has already surpassed its hardware revenue.
In 2025, within the company's automotive solutions business, product solution revenue reached 1.62 billion yuan, while licensing and service business revenue hit 1.93 billion yuan, accounting for over half. Among these, the gross margin for software licensing stood at approximately 90%, far exceeding that of the hardware business.
In other words, HORIZONROBOT-W is moving from selling chips to selling systems, and further toward selling continuous services. Once the proportion of intelligent driving mileage exceeds 50% and users form a dependency, subsequent software subscription fees, value-added function charges, and ongoing OTA fees will have a realistic foundation.
<h2>Betting</h2>
After establishing a foothold in the intelligent driving track, Yu Kai is preparing to &#34;change lanes&#34; to break out. He judges that integrated cockpit and driving systems will be the new trend, and HORIZONROBOT-W will go all-in.
Insiders told Wall Street Journal that HORIZONROBOT-W is ready to deploy two ace cards: Agentic CAR SoC (Integrated Cockpit and Driving System-on-Chip Agent) and Agentic CAR OS (Agent Operating System). The former's codename is &#34;Starlight,&#34; a cockpit-driving fusion chip supporting onboard large model operation, scheduled to debut officially on April 22, 2026, and enter mass production later this year.
At this forum, Yu Kai &#34;spoiled&#34; that &#34;Starlight&#34; will support running an agent OS similar to OpenClaw's &#34;Lobster.&#34; According to plans, the company intends to unveil this card at the Beijing Auto Show.
This means HORIZONROBOT-W is no longer content with being merely a provider of intelligent driving chips but aims to become the central brain of the entire vehicle.
Automotive electronic architectures are currently undergoing the largest migration in the past decade.
A person engaged in R&amp;D at a host manufacturer told Wall Street Journal that traditionally, inside smart vehicles, the cockpit and intelligent driving systems were separate: two chips, two controllers, two memory sets, and two software teams. The advantage was independence; the disadvantages were high costs, poor coordination, and slow development. The core logic of integrated cockpit and driving is to merge these two systems into a single central computing platform.
Yu Kai calculated: Through controller integration, chip space can be saved by 50%; shared components and computing power can reduce device costs by 30%, lowering costs per vehicle by 1,500 to 4,000 yuan.
Under current profit margins, this calculation holds real appeal for automakers.
Latest data from the China Passenger Car Association shows that in 2025, the Chinese automotive industry generated total annual revenue of approximately 11.18 trillion yuan, yet the full-year sales profit margin dropped to 4.1%, with the single-month margin in December falling even further to 1.8%.
Price wars have compressed vehicle profit margins to extremely low levels; every thousand yuan saved by automakers translates to real money. Especially in the mainstream 100,000–200,000 yuan market, cost reduction space directly determines product competitiveness.
Therefore, the debate over integrated cockpit and driving systems appears to be a technical route dispute but is essentially a fight for profits.
Data from GaoGong Smart Automotive Research Institute shows that in 2025, 1.5636 million passenger vehicles in China were equipped with front-mounted standard integrated cockpit and driving computing units, a year-over-year increase of nearly 50%. From January to September alone, new vehicle deliveries approached the scale of one million units.
This indicates the market has moved beyond the &#34;concept verification phase&#34; into the scale introduction phase. By 2030, institutions predict the penetration rate of integrated cockpit and driving systems will exceed 30%, with single-chip solutions becoming the mainstream configuration in the 100,000–200,000 yuan segment.
The window period for integrated cockpit and driving SoCs is opening. However, this is not as easy as imagined; Qualcomm currently firmly controls the domestic cockpit chip market with a market share exceeding 70%. From a practical standpoint, it is not simple for Chinese manufacturers to directly confront Qualcomm head-on.
Yu Kai's choice is: do not fight in mature markets, but fight in the next-generation market.
Yu Kai stated that some Chinese enterprises previously attempted to directly shake Qualcomm's dominance in the cockpit sector, with unsatisfactory results. HORIZONROBOT-W plans to create a blue ocean market by breaking through underlying technological innovation and system-level optimization, connecting intelligent driving and cockpit chip architectures, linking the upper-layer software ecosystem, and creating its own market space.
In other words, HORIZONROBOT-W is preparing to bypass Qualcomm's strongest areas to seize the future where Qualcomm has not yet fully established itself. This is also HORIZONROBOT-W's unique advantage compared to pure cockpit manufacturers.
Yu Kai's logic is: entering intelligent driving from the cockpit is difficult because intelligent driving requires safety redundancy and real-time decision-making capabilities; conversely, extending from intelligent driving to the cockpit has a lower threshold. However, Qualcomm's solutions are also following the integrated cockpit and driving route, and its cockpit-side ecosystem is far more mature than HORIZONROBOT-W's. Whether HORIZONROBOT-W can build a sufficient software ecosystem on the cockpit side remains an open question.
The supply chain has already begun reorganizing around this trend. XPeng merged its autonomous driving center and intelligent cockpit center into a General Intelligence Center this year; Li Auto incorporated its autonomous driving team into its intelligent space system, restructuring into three major teams: Base Model, Software Entity, and Hardware Entity.
Organizational structure often serves as a leading indicator of trends. When automakers stop distinguishing between cockpits and intelligent driving internally, it signifies they have accepted: the future car has only one system—the AI system. HORIZONROBOT-W's bet on Starlight is a wager on this future.
Tesla defined the first half of the smart car era, and Qualcomm ruled the cockpit chip age. In the next stage, Chinese companies are fighting for the right to name the new order, which will also determine how long HORIZONROBOT-W's story can continue.

09660

159995

159325

512760

588170

588780

512480

- The article discusses the evolution of intelligent driving technology and the competition in the automotive industry.  
- Horizon's CEO, Yu Kai, predicts a shift in user dependence on intelligent driving systems, with over 40% of vehicles expected to be equipped with their HSD system by early 2026, which could become standard rather than a selling point.  
- The company is transitioning from hardware to software and services, aiming to enhance profitability while preparing to integrate cockpit and driving systems into a unified platform, thus challenging established players like Qualcomm and Tesla.

Horizon Robotics Ready to Launch a Surprise Attack