Horizon Robotics' ecosystem partner Pateo Connected Vehicle won a deal from a top Chinese NEV maker to supply premium AI cockpit solutions based on the Horizon Starry chip. The chip can reduce in-vehicle hardware space by ~50%, cut per-vehicle hardware costs by ¥1,500-4,000, and shorten intelligent vehicle R&D delivery from 18 months to 8 months.
Technical Breakthrough: Single Chip Breaks Cockpit-Driving Barrier
On August 13, Horizon Robotics announced that its ecosystem partner Pateo Connected Vehicle won a deal from a top domestic NEV maker to supply premium AI cockpit solutions based on the Horizon Starry chip for the automaker's new vehicle platform. This marks the industry's first premium AI cockpit project using a pure domestic cockpit-driving integrated chip.
The Horizon Starry chip, officially launched in April 2026, is China's first cockpit-driving fusion vehicle intelligent agent chip. Its technical core lies in single-chip integrated design:
- Breaks the traditional dual-domain hardware barrier between intelligent driving and intelligent cockpit
- Achieves compute pooling, system unification, and data interoperability
- Provides a central computing foundation for full-vehicle intelligence
In terms of specifications, the Starry 6P flagship version adopts 5nm (N5A) automotive-grade process technology, integrating high-performance CPU (500KDMIPS), GPU (3000 GFLOPS), BPU (650 TOPS), and three HiFi 5 high-performance Audio DSPs. It supports up to 128GB LPDDR5X memory with maximum bandwidth of 273 GB/s.
Mass Production Value: Quantified Cost and Efficiency Gains
The Horizon Starry chip delivers quantifiable value improvements at mass production scale:
| Dimension | Traditional Solution | Starry Chip Solution | Improvement |
|---|---|---|---|
| In-vehicle hardware space | Baseline | Reduced by ~50% | — |
| Per-vehicle hardware cost | Baseline | Reduced by ¥1,500-4,000 | — |
| R&D delivery cycle | 18 months | 8 months | Shortened by 56% |
| Cockpit-driving software delivery | Baseline | Optimized | Shortened by 56% |
This means automakers can launch high-intelligence vehicles in less time and at lower cost. For China's auto industry, which is accelerating its intelligent transformation, this breakthrough is a milestone.
Advanced intelligent capabilities supported by the Starry chip include:
- Multi-modal perception fusion
- On-vehicle local large model efficient inference
- Physical AI real-time scene deduction
- Full-scenario human-vehicle interaction understanding
Ecosystem Collaboration: Chip Foundation + Full-Stack Integration
As one of Horizon Starry's first core ecosystem partners, Pateo Connected Vehicle possesses "hard-soft-chip-cloud" full-stack capabilities covering self-developed operating systems and AI application layers, intelligent cockpit domain controllers, multi-chip adaptation, and cloud AI services.
The collaboration's value lies not in single-point product capabilities, but in achieving full-chain linkage from technology to underlying platforms, customer expansion to ecosystem synergy. The partnership focuses on four dimensions:
- Cockpit-driving integration co-creation: Building cost-effective domestic cockpit-driving integration standard solutions
- Intelligent driving business synergy: Strengthening cockpit-driving function linkage,赋予 vehicles agent capabilities
- Robot intelligent system co-building: Joint R&D on robot intelligent control systems
- Global expansion linkage: Sharing domestic and overseas customer resources, building export solutions
Following iCAR as the global launch partner for Horizon's cockpit-driving fusion solution, Pateo's deal with a top automaker further validates the mass production feasibility of domestic cockpit-driving fusion solutions in the premium vehicle segment. Horizon has announced cooperation intentions from over ten automaker brands and several Tier 1 suppliers, including BAIC, BYD, Changan, Volkswagen Group, and Chery.
For China's smart auto supply chain, the mass production of pure domestic cockpit-driving integrated chips marks a key step toward core technology independence. Overseas automakers and suppliers should also monitor this technology route for cooperation and introduction opportunities. For more information, visit EX1000.COM.
