Horizon Robotics 2026 Interim Report: Gross Margin Maintains High of 66%

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.