Today's article: "China's first autonomous driving chip stock" is listed to break the "bottleneck" of automotive-grade chips
2024-08-10
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Hubei Daily News (Reporter Yan Yuntao, Correspondents Liu Wei, He Yuyang) "Stock code 2533.HK, priced at HK$28 per share..." At 9:30 on August 8, Black Sesame Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. ("Black Sesame Intelligent"), headquartered on the edge of East Lake in Wuhan, was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. This means that "China's first autonomous driving chip stock" has kicked off the prelude to China's automotive chip competition in the global track.
The operation of smart cars is inseparable from the command of the "brain", and this "brain" is the chip. The smarter the car is, the faster the "brain" responds and the higher the chip computing power is required.
On October 19, 2023, at Heizhima Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. in Qingshan District, Wuhan, staff were busy testing chips. (Photo by Hubei Daily Omnimedia reporter He Yuxin)
Similar to the plight of smartphone chips, China's automotive-grade high-computing chips are facing a grim reality of being "stuck in the neck". According to data from Frost & Sullivan, a world-renowned consulting firm, in 2022, the international giant Nvidia will account for more than 80% of the global market share in the field of high-computing autonomous driving chips.
High-computing chips are the key to China's automotive industry's race to the new track of intelligent driving. Founded in July 2016, Heizhima Intelligence is one of the few "unicorn" companies in China that took the lead in entering this track and quickly achieved a breakthrough.
On July 31, the prospectus released by Heizhima Intelligence showed that the company's independently developed Huashan series high-computing power chips and Wudang series cross-domain computing chip platforms ranked among the top three suppliers of automotive-grade high-computing power chips in the world.
"Intelligent driving is graded according to the degree of automation. Level L2 frees your feet, Level L3 frees your hands, and Level L4 frees your eyes." On August 6, Shan Jizhan, founder and CEO of Black Sesame Intelligence, said in an exclusive interview with a reporter that to fully support Level L2 and L3, it is necessary to process massive amounts of data from multiple cameras and lidars, and only high-computing power chips can support this "second-level reaction."
On October 19, 2023, at Heizhima Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. in Qingshan District, Wuhan, staff were busy testing chips. (Photo by Hubei Daily Omnimedia reporter He Yuxin)
"Our chip has two core IPs, corresponding to image signal processing and neural network processing, just like the human eye and brain, responsible for seeing clearly and understanding." Shan Jizhang said that in the field of automotive chips, the general computing unit is "TOPS". 1TOPS means that the processor can perform one trillion calculations per second. "Among the mass-produced autonomous driving chips in the world, NVIDIA's highest computing power is 254TOPS. The new A2000 of the Huashan series, which will be released this year, can reach 250+TOPS, which is basically the same."
The development cycle of automotive chips is long and the investment cost is high. From 2021 to 2023, Black Sesame Smart's R&D expenditures will be 595 million yuan, 764 million yuan, and 1.363 billion yuan respectively.
Since its establishment in 2016, Heizhima Smart has completed 10 rounds of financing, with a total financing of US$695 million. Not long ago, Wuhan Investment Holding Group and others invested 700 million yuan to participate in the issuance and subscription of Heizhima Smart's Hong Kong stock IPO, becoming a key patient capital.
"80% of the funds raised from this IPO will be used for research and development in the next five years," said Shan Jizhan.
For details, please see the first page of Hubei Daily on August 9>>
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