Registered capital of US$200 million! Horizon Robotics splits off AIoT team and establishes a robotics subsidiary

Recently, the chip company Horizon Robotics split its AIoT business team and established a wholly-owned subsidiary, Digua Robotics . Yu Kai, the founder and CEO of Horizon Robotics, serves as the legal representative of the company, with a registered capital of US$200 million (approximately RMB 1.4 billion).

Since its establishment in 2015, Horizon Robotics has focused its business development on two major directions: automobiles and AIoT. In the early stage, Horizon Robotics focused more on the research and development and iteration of smart driving chips and launched the Journey series of chips. As autonomous driving gradually becomes the mainstream of the automotive industry, this layout enables Horizon Robotics to occupy an advantageous position in the field of smart driving chips.

This "splitting off" of the AIOT team with limited manpower and resources and accelerating its development by establishing an independent company and raising funds may be a good opportunity for Horizon.

It is reported that the business scope of Digua Robot includes "artificial intelligence industry application system integration services", " intelligent robot research and development", "intelligent robot sales", "artificial intelligence hardware sales", "artificial intelligence dual innovation service platform", "5G communication technology services", "integrated circuit chip design and services", and it may target consumer-grade robots in the future.

The business scope of Digua Robot covers the entire process of intelligent robot research and development, from chip and software development to system integration applications, and can provide key technical support for many intelligent robot manufacturers. Compared with the automotive field, consumer robots have lower requirements for chip computing power, but they need to be widely adapted to different scenarios and provide rich software services, which is exactly within the "range" of Horizon.

However, the split of Horizon Robotics to form Sweet Potato Robotics is, to some extent, a "return to the starting point." Because the full name of Horizon Robotics is "Horizon Robotics," the company has regarded robots as an important development direction since its inception.

In an early interview, Horizon Robotics founder Yu Kai made it clear that the company's goal is to "be the brain of robots" and promote the evolution from "Internet of Everything" to "Intelligent Everything".

There is a synergistic effect between autonomous driving and robots. In a sense, smart cars can be regarded as "robots on wheels" with high requirements for environmental perception, decision-making, control and other technologies.

Some car companies have begun to try to apply autonomous driving technology to other scenarios. For example, the Optimus humanoid robot developed by Tesla uses the FSD autonomous driving system . Xiaopeng Motors also announced that it will use the technology bred by autonomous driving on its robot products.

Horizon Robotics has accumulated rich technical and product advantages in algorithms such as image recognition and voice interaction. This cross-border integration will undoubtedly inject new technological impetus into the intelligent robot industry. If it can effectively bridge the gaps in the robot market in the past, Sweet Potato Robot is likely to become a new strong robot brand.

But at the same time, the field of intelligent robots is highly competitive, and the road to commercialization lacks benchmark practices. Sweet Potato Robot needs patience and perseverance from technology research and development to scene implementation, and a lot of innovation in product positioning, business model, etc., in order to stand on the high ground.