In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Sep 30, 2026 · 47m · 36m saved
With Kai Yu, Founder and CEO of Horizon Robotics
Horizon Robotics supplies the chips and software in roughly one of every three intelligent cars in China. Its founder said every passenger car there will drive hands-free by the end of 2028.
Ten years ago the assumption was that self-driving cars would come out of Silicon Valley. Now Western carmakers such as Volkswagen buy the technology from Chinese suppliers, and Horizon is one of the three companies that dominate China's car-computing market.
"In some sense this is a terrible business — heavy investment, very slow return."
Kai Yu, founder and CEO of Horizon Robotics, on In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen, has worked in machine learning for more than 30 years. He did research at Siemens and NEC Labs in Silicon Valley and at Baidu, and was one of China's leading AI scientists before founding Horizon 11 years ago.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 47 minutes of audio, 11 minutes of reading.
Here are the 13 predictions that matter.
Key Takeaways
Horizon's chips run about 1 in 3 intelligent cars in China, and its customers include Volkswagen, Toyota and Suzuki
Driving goes hands off by end of 2028, eyes off by end of 2030 and mind off by end of 2035
Its current Superdrive software on the Journey 6T chip already drives hands-free
Yu will not build a car: he wants to be the Windows and Intel of robots
China's car-computing market has consolidated to three players: Nvidia, Huawei and Horizon
More than 580 new car models launched in China in the first half of the year
Meaningful volumes of humanoid robots are 5 years away, if optimistic
The winner in the car supply chain will win robotics, he said, as phone suppliers won the connected-device business
Self-driving could narrow housing price gaps and make traffic 10 times more efficient
1. One in Three Chinese Cars
Yu said Horizon is building a computing platform for robots of every kind, though nearly all of its business today is passenger cars. Its chip runs the driving software from camera perception through to trajectory planning and control.
The host said Horizon's chips run about one in four cars in China. Yu corrected him.
"One out of three, I think —" — Kai Yu
Customers and rivals
Its customers are the major Chinese carmakers plus global ones including Volkswagen, Toyota and Suzuki. He listed competitors as Mobileye, Huawei, the Chinese chip designer Black Sesame, Qualcomm, MediaTek, Texas Instruments, Renesas and NXP.
