--- title: "Horizon Robotics just won Hong Kong's biggest tech IPO — on three years of losses" date: 2026-10-02 category: Capital & Markets site: NeuroAI canonical: https://neuroai.site/a/na-capital-horizon-hk-ipo language: en --- # Horizon Robotics just won Hong Kong's biggest tech IPO — on three years of losses > The Beijing autonomous-driving chip maker priced its Hong Kong debut at HK$3.99 and raised about HK$5.4 billion, even as it reported deep net losses. The opening bell rang in Hong Kong, the stock jumped 28%, then gave most of it back by close. Behind the volatile first day was a company that sells the "brains" of self-driving cars but has never turned a profit. Horizon Robotics (地平线), a Beijing-based supplier of advanced driver-assistance (ADAS) and autonomous-driving compute, listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on October 24, 2024. It was, by multiple accounts, the exchange's largest technology IPO of the year. ## The numbers that got attention - **Listing:** HKEX main board, stock code **9660.HK**, pricing at **HK$3.99 per share**. - **Raised:** about **HK$5.4 billion** (roughly **US$690 million**), described by China Financial Information and CE.cn as the biggest Hong Kong tech IPO of 2024 and the largest Chinese tech offshore IPO in three years. - **Valuation at open:** above **HK$660 billion** market capitalization at the intraday peak, settling near **HK$534 billion** at close (per CNR and Beijing science-and-technology authorities). - **Cornerstone backers:** Alibaba, Baidu, CMA CGM (达飞集团) and a Ningbo government fund committed about **US$220 million** (roughly **HK$1.7 billion**) as cornerstone investors (CE.cn). ## A company built for the software-defined car Founded in 2015 by Yu Kai (余凯), a former head of Baidu's deep-learning institute, Horizon positions itself as a full-stack provider: chips plus the software stack that runs on them. Its Journey (征程) series of automotive compute has, the company says, shipped **more than 6 million sets** cumulatively. A next-generation Journey 6, built on its BPU Nash architecture, was unveiled in April 2024. The commercial footprint is the part investors paid for: - Solutions adopted by **27 OEMs** across **42 brands**, deployed on **290 vehicle models**. - All of China's **top-10 OEMs** are reported to use Horizon's driving-compute solutions. - By total installed solutions in 2023 and the first half of 2024, Horizon ranked **fourth globally** (9.3% and 15.4% share), and **first** in China's home-brand passenger-car full-range ADAS and front-view one-box compute markets at **28.65%** and **33.73%** (first half of 2024). ## Growth that is real — and unprofitable Revenue has grown fast, reported in the IPO documents and echoed by Chinese financial media: - 2021: about **RMB 467 million** (≈ **US$65 million**) - 2022: about **RMB 906 million** (≈ **US$126 million**) - 2023: about **RMB 1.552 billion** (≈ **US$216 million**), a compound annual growth rate near **82%** over 2021–2023 - First half of 2024: about **RMB 935 million** (≈ **US$130 million**), up **151.6%** year on year Gross margin is high and stable — **70.5%** in 2023 and **79.0%** in the first half of 2024 — reflecting the software-and-IP nature of the business. But the bottom line is deeply red. Net losses reported by CNR: - 2021: **RMB 2.064 billion** - 2022: **RMB 8.72 billion** - 2023: **RMB 6.739 billion** - First half of 2024: **RMB 5.098 billion** On an adjusted (non-IFRS) basis, losses were smaller — about RMB 1.10 billion, 1.89 billion, 1.64 billion and 0.80 billion across the same periods — but still negative every year. ## Why the market paid anyway The bull case is simple: China's passenger cars are racing to add driver-assistance as standard, and Horizon is already designed into the volume models. The bear case is also simple: the company is spending heavily to stay ahead of both foreign chip rivals and domestic competitors, and profitability is a plan, not a result. ## What the listing said about the market, not just the company Horizon's debut did something quieter than raise money: it re-priced the category. Before the listing, "automotive chip" in Chinese capital markets usually meant either an imported incumbent or a consumer-electronics chipmaker pivoting to cars. A loss-making ADAS-compute specialist raising the year's largest tech IPO — with Alibaba and Baidu buying cornerstone stakes in a company that competes with their own silicon ambitions — told every auto supplier that the capital markets would fund design wins over profits, at least for a while. That window mattered: it let Horizon, and rivals watching it, keep spending on next-generation compute while the software-defined-vehicle transition was still unsettled. ## Honest limitations - Revenue, margin, and loss figures are taken from the IPO prospectus as reported by CNR, China Financial Information and the Beijing science body; we did not access the filings directly. - Market-share percentages come from third-party consultancies (CIC, cited in filings) and industry research houses; methodologies vary. - First-day trading ranges differ slightly across outlets (close reported at HK$4.10 by CNR; intraday peak near HK$5.50 by CE.cn). We used the widely repeated HK$3.99 pricing and HK$5.4 billion raise. - This is a capital-markets event write-up, not investment advice; loss-making hardware-software firms carry execution and dilution risk. ## What readers can do now - If you track China's auto-tech supply chain, watch Horizon's "activated" OEM count and Journey 6 design wins — those are the leading indicators, more than the IPO pop. - Compare the open-loss profile here with profitable incumbent chip names before drawing conclusions about the sector's health. - Read the post-listing interim reports for adjusted-loss trend and free-cash-flow, since the IPO snapshot alone hides the burn rate. --- Published by NeuroAI (https://neuroai.site/) — https://neuroai.site/a/na-capital-horizon-hk-ipo Free to quote with attribution and a link to the original.