Unicorn, the most valuable artificial intelligence (AI) chip in the world, was born, and the winner was still a China company.
On February 27th, Horizon Robotics, an AI chip startup, revealed to The Observer. Com said that it has obtained a series B financing of about 600 million US dollars (about 4 billion RMB), with a valuation of 3 billion US dollars (about 20 billion RMB).
Last June, Cambricon Technologies, another China company, completed a series B financing of several hundred million dollars, with an overall valuation of 2.5 billion dollars (about 65.438+0.67 billion RMB), and then became the "leader" of global AI chip startups.
From this point of view, the horizon has surpassed the Cambrian and become the "most valuable" unicorn enterprise in the field of AI chips.
It should be mentioned that among the leading investors in this round of financing, South Korea's SK Hynix, the third largest semiconductor supplier in the world, is impressively listed, and Intel, the "boss" in this field, led Horizon's A+ round of financing as early as 20 17. This means that two of the top three semiconductor giants in the world have become important shareholders of Horizon.
Horizon's "Journey 1.0 Processor" comes from Horizon website.
It has been established for three years.
Horizon told Observer.com that Series B financing was jointly led by SK China, SK Hynix and several China first-tier automobile groups (with their funds).
Other participating institutions and strategic partners include: Oceanwide Investment under China Oceanwide Holding Group, Capital of People's Bank of China, CSOBOR Fund under CITIC Lyon and Songhai Capital. At the same time, this round of financing has also been blessed by existing shareholders including Morningstar Capital, Gaoyao Capital, Yunhui Capital and Linear Capital.
This is the second time that Horizon, which was established just over three years ago, has received heavyweight investment after the A+ round of financing led by Intel in 20 17, which exceeded $ 1 billion.
The company also said that the hundreds of millions of dollars invested by several domestic first-tier automobile groups in Horizon has also become the biggest investment of China automobile enterprises in the field of artificial intelligence.
Yu Kai, founder and CEO of Horizon, told Observer.com that "the important strategic partners and resources introduced by this financing will further accelerate the pace of research and development and commercialization of Horizon."
In addition, Wu, president of SK China, pointed out that "Horizon's products and solutions in the field of AI processors and autonomous driving are impressive."
Yu Kai, who used to work in Baidu, started the Baidu autopilot project on 20 13. But in May of 20 15, he left Baidu and founded Horizon in July of the same year.
Yu Kai data map is from vision china.
Before obtaining the latest round of financing, Horizon also produced a "report card".
In 20 17, Horizon released (trial production) and released China's first edge AI processor-Horizon "Journey" series processor for intelligent driving and Horizon "Rising Sun" series processor for AIoT (artificial intelligence Internet of Things) edge computing.
In 20 18, the company released the Matrix autopilot computing platform and the Horizon XForce Edge AI computing platform based on its soft and hard AI processor technology.
At present, the Matrix autopilot computing platform has been supplied to the world's top L4 autopilot manufacturers on a large scale. At the end of 20 18, the company introduced the software and hardware integration solutions such as the Navnet crowdsourcing high-precision map acquisition and positioning scheme based on the matrix computing platform, and it has begun to gradually land.
In the field of intelligent driving, Horizon's partners include Audi, Bosch, Changan, BYD, SAIC and Guangzhou Automobile.
According to Reuters, the software and hardware jointly developed by Horizon and Audi helped the latter get the license to test autonomous driving on Wuxi Highway in China.
Screenshot of Horizon Intelligent Driving Demonstration Video
China enterprises have not yet caught up with the industry giants.
Observer Network also noted that although Horizon has been favored by many capitals, in the field of AI chips, China enterprises have not caught up with the industry giants.
Compass Intelligence, a market research organization, has evaluated more than 65,438+000 chip companies around the world. In the final ranking of AI chip companies, 24 companies were shortlisted, and the top three companies were NVIDIA, Intel and IBM. Huawei is the highest ranked company in China, ranking 12.
Horizon also ranks 24th on this list, and the Cambrian mentioned above is in front of it 1.
Other short-listed China enterprises include MediaTek, Imagination, Ruixinwei and Verisilcon, ranking as 14, 15, 20 and 2 1 respectively.
Image from Compass Intelligence
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