Horizon Targets First Place in China's Autonomous Driving Chip Market Next Year, Challenging Nvidia

At the 2026 Yabuli China Entrepreneurs Forum Summer Annual Meeting, Horizon Robotics founder and CEO Yu Kai stated that the company aims to achieve the number-one market share in China's autonomous driving chip market next year, overtaking Nvidia. According to China's Blue Book on Large-Scale Application of Autonomous Driving, Horizon captured 31.94% of the total smart driving chip market in the first half of 2026, ranking first in the industry, with Nvidia following closely at 29.38%. The two companies together control more than 60% of China's smart driving chip market. Among chip suppliers for local brand passenger vehicles supporting urban Navigate on Autopilot (NOA), Horizon—driven by the mass production of its Journey 6 series—expanded its market share to 22.82%, an increase of nearly 5 percentage points compared to 2025, securing the second position in this segment. Cumulative shipments of Horizon's Journey series smart driving chips have surpassed 15 million units. Yu Kai revealed that Horizon had already taken the top spot in China's driver-assistance chip market in 2024 and launched a high-compute chip (up to 560 TOPS) in 2025 to enter the high-level autonomous driving segment. Facing Nvidia's dominance in the high-end market, Horizon is now transitioning from a narrative of "domestic substitution" to one of "domestic surpassing", as Chinese automakers increasingly adopt domestic chip solutions amid growing supply chain security concerns and cost optimization pressures.$NVDA