Gasgoo Munich-On September 16, Gasgoo hosted The 6th Automotive Semiconductor Ecosystem Conference 2026. Yang Quanshen, Senior Product Director of Automotive Business at Axera Semiconductor, took the stage to discuss trends in vehicle intelligence, chip product planning, and the company’s approach to ecosystem partnerships.
Yang Quanshen | Axera Semiconductor / Senior Product Director, Automotive Business
Yang noted that smart vehicles represent the ideal platform for AI implementation. The autonomous driving market currently splits into two categories. The first is a regulation-driven baseline market, propelled by safety standards like ABS and NCAP. This sector is poised for rapid growth over the next three to five years, with the pace accelerating further starting in 2028. The second is an experience-driven upgrade market, fueled by rising user acceptance of AI features for urban and highway driving. Globally and in China, this segment is projected to post a compound annual growth rate approaching 30% over the next three years.
Turning to smart cockpits, Yang analyzed the shortcomings of current solutions. Cloud-based deployments suffer from high network latency, questionable data privacy, and steep recurring costs from token consumption. Conversely, relying on massive local chips drives up vehicle prices and creates thermal management challenges that strain the vehicle architecture. He proposed a hybrid approach: leveraging local computing power for routine interactions while offloading complex demands to cloud-based large models.
Listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Axera’s automotive division has shipped more than 1.6 million smart driving chips since 2023, with its technology now integrated into over 40 mainstream models. Yang emphasized that the company remains a pure-play AI chip firm. "We stay strictly within our lane," he said, "focusing all our resources on perfecting the underlying perception and compute architecture."
Addressing an industry dilemma where automakers struggle to amortize the costs of self-developed chips yet fear losing control over algorithms when buying third-party solutions, Yang clarified Axera’s partnership philosophy: "We return the 'soul' to the OEMs, and leave the integration space to Tier 1 suppliers." The company acts strictly as a provider of platforms for underlying computing and perception, adhering to an open ecosystem strategy.
On the product front, Axera has built a matrix of automotive chips covering multiple scenarios. The M57, a standout for its cost-effectiveness, serves as the flagship for exports, featuring ASIL-D safety capabilities and notable low-power efficiency. Targeting high-end autonomous driving, the M97 and M95 were unveiled on September 7. Built on a 5nm process, they deliver up to 720 TOPS of single-chip compute and support a dual-chip, single-board architecture that integrates cockpit and driving functions. The X6 acts as an AI agent compute center; it can function as a standalone AI box or share a board with cockpit chips, resolving the compute and bandwidth bottlenecks of current cockpit solutions.
