Horizon Robotics, a Chinese artificial intelligence chip startup that recently began supplying self-driving chips to Li Auto, will soon launch a new self-driving chip.

Horizon Robotics will soon launch Journey 5, the industry's first intelligent central computing chip that integrates autonomous driving and intelligent interaction, with up to 128 TOPS of AI computing power on a single chip, said Yu Kai, founder, and CEO of the company, at an event held by in Great Wall Motors in Baoding, Hebei.

Based on the Journey 5 series of chips, Horizon Robotics will launch a central computer for intelligent driving with AI computing power of 200-1000 TOPS, combining the industry's highest FPS (frame per second) performance with the lowest power consumption, Yu said.

Horizon Robotics will work with automotive industry partners to accelerate the era of smart cars, he said.

Great Wall Motors announced on Feb. 8 that it had completed a strategic investment in Horizon Robotics, signaling its official entry into the chip industry.

According to the strategic cooperation framework agreement signed by both parties, they will focus on the direction of advanced assisted driving (ADAS), high-level autonomous driving, and smart cockpit, and jointly explore automotive smart technology and develop smart car products.

They will also lay out intelligent core technologies such as autonomous driving and intelligent network connection to accelerate the development and mass production of smart cars on the ground.

Horizon Robotics was founded in 2015, with investors including Intel Capital, Hillhouse Capital and Jack Ma's Yunfeng Capital, and partners including Li Auto, BYD, SAIC Motor, Audi.

Horizon Robotics' in-vehicle AI chip, Journey 3, was released in September 2020 and is based on Horizon's self-developed BPU2.0 architecture using a 16nm process.

The Journey 3 chip AI algorithm reaches 5 TOPS, with a typical power consumption of 2.5W, and supports high-level assisted driving, intelligent cockpit, automatic parking assistance, high-level autonomous driving and crowdsourced high precision map positioning application scenarios.

On May 25, Li Auto announced the 2021 Li ONE with two Journey 3 autonomous driving chips from Horizon Robotics.

Horizon Robotics released Journey 2 chip in 2019, which is the first local vehicle-grade AI chip in China. It consumes 2W of power and is based on the BPU2.0 (Brain Processing Unit) architecture, providing over 4 TOPS of computing power to process multiple types of intelligent driving tasks in real-time.

Horizon Robotics plans to launch the Journey 5P in 2022 and the Journey 6 chip in 2023.

The Journey 6 chip meets ASIL-D, the highest automotive safety standard, with more than 400 TOPS of computing power, and uses a 7nm process.

Horizon Robotics, Li Auto's self-driving chip supplier, reportedly considering US IPO