Core Viewpoint - Horizon Robotics has engaged in high-frequency financing since its market debut, raising over 15 billion yuan within a year, but continues to face significant losses and challenges in technology competitiveness [1][2][3]. Financing Activities - On September 26, Horizon announced a share placement at HKD 9.99 per share, raising approximately HKD 63.4 billion (about RMB 58.12 billion) [2]. - The share placement was at a discount of about 5.75% compared to the closing price on September 25, with the new shares representing about 4.6% of the existing share capital [2]. - Since its IPO in October last year, Horizon has raised a total of approximately RMB 150.29 billion through various financing rounds, including HKD 54.07 billion at IPO and HKD 46.74 billion in June [2]. Financial Performance - In the first half of the year, Horizon reported revenues of approximately RMB 15.67 billion, a year-on-year increase of 67.6%, but losses expanded from RMB 50.98 billion to RMB 52.33 billion [3]. - Cumulatively, Horizon has incurred losses exceeding RMB 175 billion from 2021 to 2023, with adjusted operating losses increasing by 34.9% year-on-year to RMB 11.11 billion [3][4]. Research and Development - Horizon's R&D expenses reached RMB 23 billion in the first half of the year, a 62% increase from RMB 14.2 billion in the same period last year [5]. - Despite significant R&D investments, Horizon's technology remains behind international chip giants, which are advancing to 4nm/5nm processes, while Horizon is still at the 7nm stage [6]. Market Competition - The trend of automakers developing their own technologies has further compressed Horizon's market space, as clients like BYD and Li Auto are reducing their reliance on Horizon's software solutions [7][8]. - Horizon is caught in a cycle of financing, R&D, and losses, and without breakthroughs in technology or new customer growth, the company faces increasing uncertainty in a competitive landscape [8].

Core Viewpoint - Horizon faces significant challenges in business, profitability, and technology despite reporting a revenue increase in the first half of 2025 [1] Financial Performance - In the first half of 2025, Horizon reported revenue of approximately 1.567 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 67.6%, while losses expanded to 5.233 billion yuan from 5.098 billion yuan in the same period last year [2] - Adjusted operating losses grew by 34.9% year-on-year to 1.111 billion yuan, primarily due to rising sales costs and R&D expenses [2] - Sales costs surged to 543 million yuan, a staggering increase of 177.13% compared to 196 million yuan in the previous year [2] - The automotive product solutions segment contributed 778 million yuan in revenue, a 250% increase from 222 million yuan year-on-year, with a gross margin improvement of 3.9 percentage points to 45.6% [3] - The automotive licensing and services business saw a 6.9% revenue increase to 738 million yuan, but its gross margin declined from 93% to 89.7% [3] - Overall gross margin decreased by 13.7 percentage points to 65.36% due to fluctuations in gross margins across different business segments [3] R&D and Operational Costs - R&D expenses reached 2.3 billion yuan, a 62% increase from 1.42 billion yuan year-on-year, driven by a strategic shift towards mid-to-high-end assisted driving solutions [5] - Administrative expenses rose by 26.33% to 307 million yuan, while sales and marketing expenses increased from 198 million yuan to 272 million yuan [6] Competitive Landscape - Despite significant R&D investments, Horizon's technology still lags behind international chip giants like Intel, Qualcomm, and NVIDIA, which are advancing to 4nm/5nm processes [7][8] - The self-research trend among automotive manufacturers is reducing Horizon's market space, as clients like BYD and Li Auto begin to develop their own chips and algorithms [9] Customer Dependency - Horizon's revenue is heavily reliant on a few major clients, with the top five clients accounting for 52.48% of revenue in the first half of 2025, and the largest client contributing 19.7% [10][11] - The instability of client business has become evident, with significant drops in revenue contribution from major clients compared to the previous year [12]

Core Insights - Li Auto has successfully developed its self-researched intelligent driving chip M100, which has passed critical pre-mass production stages in Q1 of this year [1] - The M100 chip has completed functional and performance testing within two weeks and is currently undergoing road tests with small batches of vehicles [1] - The M100 chip demonstrates specific performance characteristics, providing effective computing power comparable to multiple NVIDIA Thor-U chips in different tasks [1] Group 1 - The M100 chip has achieved a performance level in running large language model (LLM) tasks equivalent to that of 2 NVIDIA Thor-U chips [1] - In traditional visual tasks related to convolutional neural networks (CNN), the M100 chip's effective computing power is comparable to that of 3 NVIDIA Thor-U chips [1]