Recently, Yang Yuxin, the CMO of self-driving chip company “Black Sesame Intelligence”, announced that the HuaShan II A1000 series chips from Black Sesame Intelligence will enter mass production and be officially installed on cars this year, making it the fastest in the field.
Practitioners in the automotive chip field should be familiar with Black Sesame Intelligence. The company has started commercial cooperation with China FAW, Bosch, SAIC, Baidu, Dongfeng Yuedi, T3, Junlian Zhixing, Zhongke Chuangda, Asia Pacific, and others in the L2/3 level ADAS and autonomous driving perception system solutions.
In September 2021, Black Sesame Intelligence completed a strategic and Series C financing totaling hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars. The strategic round was participated by domestic industrial leading enterprises such as Xiaomi Yangtze River Industrial Fund and Fushida Automotive; The Series C financing was led by Xiaomi Yangtze River Industrial Fund, with follow-up funding from Wentai Ventures and others. After this round of financing, Black Sesame Intelligence was valued at nearly $2 billion, becoming a unicorn in the automotive chip field.
This is also the first investment in the automotive chip sector by Xiaomi after announcing its venture into car making. Xiaomi’s self-developed L4 level autonomous driving system, in partnership with Black Sesame Intelligence, will help the company to make up for its shortcomings. In the future, Xiaomi’s cars are likely to use Black Sesame Intelligence’s autonomous driving computing chips and R&D platform.
The HuaShan II A1000 series chip was released in June 2020; this was the first domestically produced chip that could support L2+ autonomous driving. Domestic chips have been constrained by foreign restrictions, and Black Sesame Intelligence has caught the wave of the country’s drive to nationalize automotive chips, which is an opportunity.
Black Sesame Intelligence has so far released several chips, including HuaShan I A500, HuaShan II A1000, and HuaShan II A1000 Pro. Its products already cover autonomous driving scenarios from L2 to L4 levels. The HuaShan II A1000 Pro single chip has a computing power of 196 TOPS, which can support advanced autonomous driving functions and achieve seamless connection between parking, city driving, and high-speed scenarios.
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.