ACEM CLGO students visit Horizon Robotics to gain an insight into the automotive smart chip industry

On March 31, 2023, the teachers and students of the CLGO program at ACEM paid a visit to Horizon Robotics, a giant enterprise in smart driving chips. In addition to the teachers and students of the 2021 and 2022 CLGO program, the teachers and students from SJTU-BOC Institute of Technology & Finance also participated in this event. The CLGO alumni responsible for reception and explanation this time were Jia Xiaoliang from 2015 CLGO, who currently serves as Senior Sales Director of Horizon Robotics, and Wu Shilu, a 2007 CLGO alumnus who currently serves as Senior Business Strategy Director of Horizon Robotics.

Firstly, Jia Xiaoliang introduced the company's founder, entrepreneurial experience, mission, and vision to everyone. Then, he introduced the corporate background information such as the development process, technical advantages, and application scenarios of Horizon Robotics' core products.

After introducing the chip products, Jia Xiaoliang introduced the future and application scenarios of advanced intelligent driving vehicles to everyone. The software of future smart vehicles is no longer device-centered, but people-centered, meeting the needs of drivers and passengers. It has been structured at the level of human-machine co-driving, enabling linkage between the inside and outside of vehicle. Horizon Robotics’ goal is to become the chip company that understands algorithms the most, and the algorithm company that understands chips the most.

Then, Wu Shilu introduced the development of the smart vehicle industry, the follow-up entry of major car manufacturers in the world, and the entry of hard technology giants that has accelerated industrial transformation. The future industrial chain of the automotive industry will undergo significant changes, and the future mobility will be based on an interconnected ecosystem. Automobile manufacturers and insurance companies are not the only ones that provide services for customers, and the services providers may also include mobility service providers, telecommunications operators, and urban road and infrastructure service providers.

Disruptive changes will occur in the business model of the automotive industry, which will shift from one-time product delivery to providing consumers with continuous value-added services. In these industrial developments, the chip and AI industries need to continuously improve their integration, and have higher requirements for data processing capabilities in visual recognition. Driven by AI and data, the automotive software development is brought into the 2.0 era. Subsequently, Wu compared and analyzed well-known chip companies in China and overseas, stating that automotive chips will surpass mobile phone chips and become the largest vertical market in the semiconductor industry. At present, autonomous driving chips are in a stage of competition with performance and efficiency, while the next stage of the development of automotive autonomous driving chips is the competition with ecology.

In the Q&A part, students from CLGO and MTT spoke enthusiastically, raising questions about the future application scenarios of autonomous driving, the competitive environment of automotive chips, capital's expectations for the chip industry, and the industry chain.

Finally, the students of the CLGO program and the teachers and students of SJTU-BOC Institute of Technology & Finance in this visit took a group photo with alumni Jia Xiaoliang and Wu Shilu. Moreover, this event allowed students to have a better understanding of the intelligent vehicle driving industry and feel the potential and charm of AI.