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Horizon Robotics 2026 interim report: gross margin maintains high of 66%. Edited by Yara From Gasgoo | September 2, 2026 14:43 BJT Gasgoo Munich- Horizon Robotics (9660.HK) released its financial report for the first half of 2026 on August 31. During the period, the company achieved revenue of 2.055 billion yuan, up 32.9% year-on-year; its comprehensive gross margin held steady at the high level of 66%, with gross profit reaching 1.356 billion yuan, a 32.9% increase. This dual growth in revenue and profit demonstrates strong resilience against the market headwinds. Specifically, revenue from products and solutions reached 926 million yuan, a 14.8% increase, while licensing and service income hit 1.129 billion yuan, up 52.7%. Image Source: Horizon Robotics In the first half of 2026, China's auto market accelerated its structural upgrade toward intelligence even as total volume faced pressure. Intelligent driving has shifted from a differentiating feature to a necessity, with the focus of upgrades moving from highway NOA to urban NOA. Amid this structural opportunity, Horizon Robotics set new records in multiple market share metrics, displaying particularly strong upward momentum in the high-end segment. Financial data shows that shipments of Horizon's Journey series chips bucked the trend, rising 12.1% to 2.218 million units and driving product and solution revenue up 14.8% to 926 million yuan. Notably, Horizon has secured design wins for nearly 500 models in total; in the mid-to-high-end intelligent driving sector, it has accumulated close to 130 model design wins. Beyond its continued leadership in the domestic brand market, Horizon is accelerating its expansion into joint ventures and overseas markets to unlock further growth. In the joint venture sector, Horizon has partnered with top-tier global suppliers like Bosch, Denso, Carizon, neueHCT, and Astemo to deeply integrate into the core supply chains of joint venture automakers. As Chinese intelligent driving technology accelerates its entry into global automaker systems, Horizon has become a key partner for the intelligent upgrade of joint venture brands. Overseas markets offer another layer of incremental growth. In the first half, China's vehicle exports jumped 65.3% year-on-year. Horizon has achieved full coverage of the top six exporters, which account for over 70% of total export volume (CR6), securing more than 60 design wins for export models. Many of these are equipped with mid-to-high-end intelligent driving hardware platforms, helping domestic brands maintain their competitive edge in intelligence abroad. The accelerated realization of the "ARM+Android" style underlying licensing model serves as a deeper signal of commercial value in Horizon's interim report. In the first half of 2026, licensing and service revenue reached 1.129 billion yuan, a 52.7% increase. Horizon supports building an open platform with its BPU, chips, base models, algorithms, and toolchains, licensing core underlying technologies to customers to support their independent development. This model is characterized by high margins, high reusability, and strong stickiness. Horizon's partnership with Volkswagen Group is a benchmark for this model. Their joint venture, Carizon, leverages Horizon's advanced AI base model capabilities to drive the launch of Volkswagen Group's Level 3 autonomous driving functions in the second half of 2027, supporting future scenarios like Robotaxis. Meanwhile, one of the world's largest automotive parts groups continues to use Horizon's licensing, validating the global recognition and ecosystem stickiness of this model. This platform capability, proven in automotive scenarios, is now extending into the realm of physical AI. During the reporting period, Horizon has exported technology through partners to diverse edge computing platforms, including embodied intelligence, unmanned logistics vehicles, home agents, and electric two-wheelers, further broadening the application boundaries of its underlying technology. Simultaneously, Horizon is building a comprehensive vehicle intelligence system through its Journey series chips, the Holistic Scenario Driving (HSD) system, Xingkong - China's first cockpit-driving fusion vehicle agent chip - and KKClaw, China's first vehicle agent operating system. Notably, all four product lines have achieved key progress. HSD V2.0 has realized a comprehensive leap based on world models and end-to-end reinforcement learning, with the intelligent driving activation rate in vehicles equipped with this solution exceeding 88%. The Xingkong cockpit-driving fusion chip and the KKClaw vehicle agent OS are set for mass production in the fourth quarter of 2026, enabling deep collaboration between cockpit and driving on a single base. Development of the next-generation strategic chip, Journey 7, is proceeding smoothly and is expected to launch officially in 2027. Beyond significantly improved computing power over the previous generation, it is natively optimized for the localized deployment of next-generation HSD models with larger parameters and the KKClaw intelligent cockpit model. Gasgoo not only offers timely news and profound insight about China auto industry, but also help with business connection and expansion for suppliers and purchasers via multiple channels and methods. 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Micron Technology finalizes Strategic Customer Agreements with global automotive leaders. July 17, 2026 The international transportation landscape has reached a profound structural turning point. For nearly a century, an automaker's competitive differentiation was defined strictly by mechanical engineering precision-the internal displacement of an engine block, the hydraulic tuning of a transmission, and the aerodynamic silhouette of a steel chassis. Today, that legacy paradigm has been replaced by a new computing standard: the Software-Defined Vehicle (SDV). In a modern vehicle, the user experience is driven entirely by high-performance edge computation. Functions such as multi-camera Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), automated parking matrices, high-fidelity digital cockpits, and local generative AI voice assistants require automobiles to operate as mobile, high-speed data factories. Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence However, shifting to an AI-native vehicular architecture introduces a massive, industry-wide operational bottleneck. Because real-time sensor loops and in-cabin machine learning inference models parse gigabytes of unstructured data per second, modern vehicles require immense, specialized memory and storage capacities. Discover more Company News People & Society Business & Industrial This surge in demand arrives at a time when global chip availability is heavily constrained by an ongoing infrastructure boom in cloud data centers, which drains global memory capacity. Because automotive electronics must meet strict environmental durability standards and remain in production across long vehicle lifecycles, automakers cannot simply purchase generic consumer-grade electronics on the volatile spot market. To secure this critical hardware foundation, memory and storage giant Micron Technology, Inc. announced the completion of several landmark Strategic Customer Agreements (SCAs) with key Tier 1 automotive suppliers and ecosystem platform partners. By locking in three-to-five-year supply and pricing commitments with dominant technology leaders-including Qualcomm, Hyundai Mobis, HARMAN, DENSO, Visteon, Astemo, and JOYNEXT-Micron is moving past traditional transactional purchasing models to establish a highly resilient, collaborative component pipeline across the global automotive market. Unveiling a resilient, multi-year silicon perimeter. The finalization of these ecosystem SCAs formalizes a deeper operational alliance between silicon foundries and Tier 1 automotive component builders. Rather than navigating fragmented component brokers, the world's leading automotive technology suppliers are securing their critical memory assets directly from the primary manufacturing source. These agreements build upon similar long-term deals completed earlier in the month with major original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) like Ford and General Motors, representing a comprehensive push by Micron to insulate its factory utilization rates from sudden market downturns. The unified ecosystem framework introduces several critical capabilities: The Strategic Customer Agreement Structure: The contracts rely on fixed, multi-year volume and pricing frameworks. This mechanism insulates Tier 1 electronics builders from sudden pricing spikes while granting Micron high predictability for long-term manufacturing capacity planning. Deep Co-Design Integration: Beyond basic component sales, the agreements establish a permanent technology feedback loop. Micron's engineers will collaborate directly with platform designers at Qualcomm and Visteon, mapping future LPDRAM and automotive NAND layouts to match next-generation digital cockpit system architectures. Balancing Technology Cycles with Durability: The agreements address a core industry challenge: balancing the rapid adoption of advanced consumer technologies (like AI inference chips) with the traditionally extended product lifecycles and rigorous qualification tests required for road safety. Engineering & Technology Global Supply Continuity: The agreements leverage Micron's diversified manufacturing footprint-including its advanced automotive DRAM fabrication fab in Manassas, Virginia - to guarantee geographic redundancy and shield the automotive sector from regional logistics disruptions. Impact on the automotive industry. The structural alliance engineered by Micron and its Tier 1 partners marks an important evolutionary step for the broader Automotive landscape, changing how technology assets are secured: 1. The Absolute Elimination of "Just-in-Time" Sourcing for Silicon For decades, the global automotive supply chain relied on absolute asset reduction - ordering electronic components only weeks before vehicle assembly to keep internal overhead low. The severe supply gridlocks experienced during recent chip shortages proved that this model is incompatible with advanced silicon. This multi-party deal demonstrates that Vertical Supply Security is now an institutional requirement. Automotive electronics providers are acting as direct financial partners to semiconductor foundries, dedicating capital years in advance to guarantee their assembly lines remain protected. 2. Increasing Speed of Standardized Edge AI Hardware Adoption The changing needs of consumers to have intuitive, smartphone-based user experience in their vehicles is putting manufacturers under tremendous pressure to quickly deliver software updates. Securing a multi-year inventory of high bandwidth memory chips will give platform providers such as HARMAN and Hyundai Mobis the ability to create very robust software road maps. The software engineers can be sure that the software they develop is for a guaranteed multi-year life cycle of hardware. Overall effects on businesses operating in the sector. For commercial electronics design firms, third-party software developers, and automotive fleet operators navigating this connected landscape, the ecosystem expansion introduces direct strategic advantages: Slicing Operational Expenses via Production Predictability: Unexpected component shortages frequently erode margins for parts builders locked into rigid contracts with global automakers. Access to a pre-validated, direct foundry line eliminates pricing surprises, protecting corporate production budgets from unexpected market inflation. Future-Proofing Platform Safety Valuations: Relying on unvalidated, generic memory arrays leaves automated driving features exposed to data transmission lag and thermal failures. Anchoring digital architectures to hardened, long-lifecycle automotive memory blocks ensures that critical safety features remain stable across decades of road use. Reshaping Procurement Strategies for Smaller Market Competitors: As major Tier 1 suppliers systematically lock down global chip capacity through long-term contracts, unaligned tier-two manufacturers and smaller tech providers face intense procurement constraints. Smaller market participants must adjust their corporate financial strategies, establishing their own long-term customer agreements to avoid being squeezed out of advanced components markets. Conclusion. "The next phase of automotive innovation will depend on the strength of the ecosystem behind it," stated Sanjay Mehrotra, Chairman, President and CEO of Micron Technology. The completion of these comprehensive Strategic Customer Agreements is a definitive reminder that long-term survival in the software-defined mobility era requires looking past individual software code blocks down to core physical silicon manufacturing. By pairing Micron's deep memory fabrication scale with the digital platform expertise of Qualcomm, HARMAN, and Hyundai Mobis, these industry leaders are delivering the foundational tools needed to make automated transit a real-world reality. For the automotive sector, this rollout outlines a clear operating principle for the road ahead: future market resilience belongs to highly cooperative, open ecosystems-sustaining global mobility on an absolute foundation of hardware precision, structural supply guarantees, and undeniable platform trust. Discover more Internet & Telecom Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence Supply Chain