On April 22, Horizon Robotics (09660) held its annual product and technology launch event in Beijing under the theme "Boundless Journey, Meeting the Stars." The company officially introduced China's first cockpit-drive integrated vehicle AI agent chip, named Horizon Starry®, alongside the country's inaugural vehicle AI agent operating system, Horizon KaKaClaw™. Simultaneously, it released the full-scenario assisted driving system HSD V1.6.
This launch signifies that Horizon has率先 completed the strategic puzzle of vehicle computing, spanning from chips to software and from autonomous driving to smart cockpits. It positions the company as one of the rare industry players capable of mastering all four quadrants, providing the underlying computing platform and infrastructure for smart vehicles to evolve into full-vehicle AI agents.
At the event, Dr. Yu Kai, Founder and CEO of Horizon, delivered a keynote speech. He stated, "The three major products we launched today—China's first cockpit-drive integrated vehicle AI agent chip Horizon Starry®, the nation's first vehicle AI agent OS KaKaClaw™, and the intelligent assisted driving system HSD V1.6—mark another significant strategic elevation for Horizon. We have now become a comprehensive technology enabler for full-vehicle intelligence."
Integration is an enduring principle of computing systems. The Starry chip heralds the era of central computing. As AI models converge, on-vehicle computing is moving towards deep integration. In the PC domain, chips have integrated functions from floating-point calculations and memory management to visual processing and AI computing. Similarly, mobile phone chips continuously evolve by merging communication modules, image processing, and NPUs. Each integration wave has defined a new era.
Today, on-vehicle computing is transitioning from distributed systems to a centrally integrated AI computing model, ultimately realizing the full-vehicle AI agent. As a "new species of technology," Horizon Starry® will fundamentally颠覆 the traditional separated architectures of intelligent driving and smart cockpit systems.
Built on a 5nm automotive-grade process, the Starry 6P chip delivers a BPU computing power of 650 TOPS with a memory bandwidth of 273 GB/s. It supports the concurrent deployment of large models for both cockpit digital AI and high-level assisted driving. Through a unified memory architecture and unified underlying software, vehicle computing will advance from separate domain control to the central computing era—reducing space occupancy by 50%, lowering comprehensive vehicle costs by 1,500 to 4,000 RMB per unit, shortening R&D and delivery cycles from 18 months to 8 months, and cutting integrated cockpit-driving hardware and software delivery time by 56%.
Safety is the cornerstone of intelligent mobility. To address the challenge of safety isolation in cockpit-drive integration, Horizon pioneered the Fortress safety physical isolation architecture. This ensures physical separation and independent operation of the cockpit and driving domains. The vehicle's intelligent driving domain achieves the highest ASIL-D safety level, guaranteeing that cockpit restarts do not affect driving functions, thereby ensuring行车 safety without compromise.
Horizon anticipates that the transition from separation to integration is an inevitable trend in computing system evolution. The launch of China's first cockpit-drive integrated vehicle AI agent chip, Starry, will redefine the performance flagship for vehicle AI agent chips, equipping smart cars with a unified "most powerful brain" for the first time.
To date, the Starry chip has secured意向 production partnerships with over 10 automotive brands, including Volkswagen, Chery, and BYD, as well as several Tier 1 suppliers like Bosch and Denso.
An agent is the optimal form for an on-vehicle OS. KaKaClaw™ gives cars a "soul." In the AI era, an operating system acts as an agent connecting users to the world—it understands user intent, proactively orchestrates tasks, and mobilizes hardware resources. An Agent represents the best form for a vehicle OS; it should not be a fixed software version but an Agent capable of integrating autonomous driving capabilities and large model intelligence.
As China's first vehicle AI agent operating system (Agentic Car OS), KaKaClaw™ realizes an intelligent interaction paradigm of "task-as-a-service." Using simple natural language commands, users can simultaneously调度 both driving and cockpit systems via the full-vehicle intelligent system. Physical Agents, digital Agents, and cloud-edge large models respond in sync, with core functions deployed locally to cover all cockpit and driving scenarios.
KaKaClaw™ showcases three impressive highlights. First, it has "personality," supporting multi-dimensional character settings with switchable personas like "Practical Doer," "Understanding Friend," and "All-Rounder," alongside dialect support and full-scenario tone synchronization. Second, it boasts "good memory;" a long-term memory system continuously learns user habits and automatically generates personalized scenario skills, truly becoming "more understanding with use." Most strikingly, it "knows a lot"—not only can it perform tasks and entertain, but it also self-improves. It proactively cares, allows custom definitions, and upgrades its skill library on demand. While the system comes with built-in scenario skills, users can also create personalized skills with zero coding. Both official and user-created skills can be published and shared, with the system automatically activating the most suitable skill combinations.
For security, the entire Skill ecosystem operates within an independent security Sandbox, physically isolated from external execution systems. A policy engine strictly controls each permission, blocking all unauthorized calls by default. Every tool invocation must pass security policy review, ensuring no unauthorized interactions among cloud models, vehicle controls, and third-party APIs. A Privacy Router manages all external channels, giving users clear awareness of each granted permission. User memories remain solely within the vehicle, eliminating privacy leakage concerns.
From "showing off skills" to "inspiring confidence:" HSD V1.6 is the waltz of intelligent assisted driving. If KaKaClaw™ gives the car a "soul," then HSD (Horizon SuperDrive™) is the action center that allows this soul to drive the vehicle safely and reliably. HSD is China's first mass-produced single-stage end-to-end assisted driving system, advancing assisted driving from the rule-based era to the end-to-end era.
Among models offering HSD as a high-end option, 77% of users actively choose the HSD-equipped version. The proportion of miles driven using intelligent driving is approaching the critical 50% threshold—indicating that a growing number of HSD users are willing to cede "control" to the machine.
Against this backdrop of high user trust, the newly released HSD V1.6 further iterates on the core challenge of how the full-vehicle AI agent can genuinely earn users' daily trust. The technical direction shifts from "complex skill demonstrations" to "everyday reassurance," focusing on high-frequency commuting and travel scenarios to create a more elegant, reassuring, and efficient assisted driving "waltz."
Yu Kai shared the product philosophy: "What truly earns user trust is not occasional brilliance in extreme scenarios, but reassurance in daily high-frequency situations." HSD V1.6 focuses on users' daily commuting, achieving comprehensive advancements: more elegant driving, upgraded parking, and robust safety nets.
For driving scenarios, it enhances cruising and follow comfort, improves dynamic negotiation capabilities at intersections, and makes lane-changing experiences more precise and natural. For parking, it adds remote parking, exit-and-park functionality, and recognition of suspended obstacles. From a safety perspective, it introduces departure reminders, reverse emergency braking, automatic emergency steering avoidance, and enhanced door opening warnings, aiming to provide users with an intelligent travel experience that becomes "more relaxed with use and more放心 to drive."
The fusion of physical and digital worlds: Horizon advances toward the full-vehicle AI agent with "comprehensive altruism." Horizon believes that physical world AI and digital world AI will ultimately converge into the full-vehicle AI agent. Between 2025 and 2030, we are in the era of physical AI, with autonomous driving as its first major application. Post-2030, physical and digital AI will fully merge, comprehensively empowering humans and all things.
Yu Kai has previously stated that Horizon's mission is to empower smart cars and robots, making human life safer and better. The company is committed to turning cutting-edge technologies for the few into everyday experiences for the many.
Reflecting on Horizon's journey, from the Journey 2 to Journey 6 chips, it achieved the fastest acceleration to 10 million units shipped within five years. From the Starry chip to KaKaClaw™, Horizon is driving the democratization of full-vehicle intelligence through continuous strategic elevation and cognitive iteration.
The powerful combination of HSD and KaKaClaw™ creates a Chinese advanced version of the FSD and Grok duo—based on an underlying integrated cockpit-driving chip, featuring a native vehicle AI agent OS, and supported by Horizon's "advancing together" open ecosystem. This enables the car to become a full-vehicle AI agent that "knows a lot, has good memory, and possesses personality," capable of understanding complex scenarios, making autonomous decisions, and continuously evolving like a human.
The full-vehicle AI agent is poised to become the greatest intelligent terminal after the smartphone. With chips as the foundation, KaKaClaw™ as the soul, and HSD as the action center, Horizon has率先 built a complete technological platform通向 the full-vehicle AI agent. This will not only promote the large-scale adoption of cockpit-drive integration but also accelerate the arrival of the full-vehicle AI agent era.
At the 2026 Horizon annual product technology launch, Su Jun, General Manager of the iCAR brand business unit, was invited to the stage. Together with Horizon Founder and CEO Yu Kai, they announced that iCAR will be the global launch partner for Horizon's cockpit-drive integrated full-vehicle intelligent solution.
"Boundless Journey, Meeting the Stars." Upholding the open ecosystem philosophy of "comprehensive altruism," Horizon will continue to collaborate with a growing number of industry partners to embark on the next chapter of China's smart automotive journey. The aim is to turn the vision of the full-vehicle AI agent into reality, bringing safer and better travel experiences into everyone's daily life.
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