Axera Launches Automotive Brand "Axera Auto": Self-developed Technologies Empower Automakers to Reduce Costs and Boost Efficiency

On November 15, 2023, Axera, a leading enterprise in artificial intelligence chip R&D and basic computing power platforms, held a themed automotive brand launch conference entitled "Unite for Innovation, Accelerate for the Future" in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province. At the conference, Axera officially launched its automotive brand Axera Auto for the intelligent driving sector, demonstrating the company's technological strength and commercial achievements in this field, further enriching its strategic layout, and practicing the corporate vision of "Democratizing AI for a Better Life". Xi Ming, Member of the Party Leadership Group of Ningbo Municipal People's Government and Director of Ningbo Economic & Technological Development Zone Administrative Committee, Fang Wei, Secretary of the Party Leadership Group of Ningbo Association for Science and Technology, Lin Bin, Secretary of Zhenhai District Party Committee of Ningbo, Qiu Xiaoxin, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Axera, Gong Huimin, President of Axera's Automotive Business Unit, and other distinguished guests attended the launch conference and witnessed the official release of the Axera Auto brand together.

Positioned as a Tier 2 supplier, Axera Auto is committed to becoming a long-term value provider for the automotive industry. It offers a full range of solutions for automotive front-view integrated machines, integrated parking and driving domain controllers, CMS, DMS/OMS and other applications, and is equipped with efficient and easy-to-use toolchains, a rich software development platform, and application-oriented reference designs to meet customers' diverse needs. At present, the relevant chip products have been mass-produced and installed in vehicles.

In his speech, Xi Ming stated that the launch of Axera's automotive brand will strongly empower Ningbo to focus on the key direction of intelligent connected vehicles and build an advanced new energy vehicle industry cluster with leading technologies, high-end brands, industrial agglomeration and a complete industrial chain. He hoped that Axera will accelerate the construction of an innovation consortium led by products and dominated by enterprises, continuously increase investment in R&D and design, enrich the product portfolio and roadmap, promote the integration of the industrial chain, innovation chain, capital chain and talent chain, and better help Ningbo build a city of new energy vehicles and a global capital of intelligent manufacturing and innovation.

Lin Bin said that Axera's achievement of mass production and launch of autonomous driving chips in a short period of time demonstrates its excellent potential to become a leader and model in mobile intelligent computing platforms, and will also bring more strategic integration effects, industrial agglomeration effects and talent driving effects to Zhenhai. He hoped that more upstream and downstream enterprises in the industrial chain will become "partners" in Zhenhai's development to co-create, co-build, share and win-win together.

Dr. Qiu Xiaoxin, CEO of Axera, said that Axera has always taken "building a world-class perception and computing platform" as its mission and is committed to becoming the digital entry point to the physical world, providing a basic computing power platform for artificial intelligence in various industries. The launch of the automotive brand Axera Auto is a mutual embrace between Chinese automakers and Chinese automotive chip enterprises. Axera Auto will adhere to developing high-performance, high-quality and highly independent Chinese automotive chips to boost the take-off of China's intelligent automotive industry.

Four Generations of Products with Mass Shipments in Four Years: "One Body, Two Wings" Strategic Layout Empowers Three Core Scenarios

Axera Semiconductor (Ningbo) Co., Ltd. was founded in May 2019, dedicated to building world-leading artificial intelligence perception and edge computing chips, serving the huge edge and end-side device markets such as smart cities, intelligent driving, robots and AR/VR. Over the past four years, Axera has successfully R&D and mass-produced more than four generations of AI chips for end and edge sides, achieving large-scale shipments.

   At the conference, Dr. Qiu Xiaoxin shared the underlying thinking of Axera's technological capabilities in the 2.0 era, stating that "Computing + Perception" will play a key role in connecting the physical and digital worlds. Based on this understanding, Axera has independently developed two core technologies: Axera Smart Compute mixed-precision NPU and Axera Smart Vision AI-ISP. These two technologies have revolutionized perception and computing in the AI era — subverting traditional technologies with AI, redefining products with AI, comprehensively improving energy efficiency ratio, and raising the industry's benchmark.

In terms of business scenarios, Qiu Xiaoxin said that Axera first entered the smart city sector, and its product solutions were recognized by leading enterprises for their outstanding performance, quickly becoming an industry leader. The company then extended its technological advantages to multiple fields, and deeply laid out intelligent driving, robotics and innovative services. After four years of development, Axera has established a "One Body, Two Wings" strategic layout centered on AIoT with ADAS as the two wings. Among them, AIoT covers smart cities, robots and other fields; ADAS focuses on products such as L2 and above ADAS, integrated parking and driving, and integrated intelligent driving. The steady development strategy will help Axera achieve high-quality diversified growth based on its solid technological capabilities.

Axera Auto's Full Product Matrix Empowers the Domestic Intelligent Driving Market

At the conference, Axera officially released its automotive brand Axera Auto, which has now completed a comprehensive layout in the automotive field. On site, Gong Huimin announced the M series full product lineup covering the complete L2-L4 product roadmap, including the mass-produced M55H and the high-speed integrated parking and driving M76H that have been installed in vehicles. He also showcased intelligent driving solutions for different application scenarios, including the CMS Electronic Outer Rearview Mirror System, 2-in-1 Driving Monitoring System and Intelligent Front-view System based on M55H, as well as the Driving Assistance and Automatic Parking System based on M76H and its upgraded products. These solutions have been gradually verified by many automakers, delivered in batches in 2023, and are planned to be large-scale applied in 2024, strongly supporting the implementation of L2/L3 level intelligent driving in more vehicle models.

The rapid implementation of the M series automotive chips stems from the accumulation of Axera's two self-developed core technologies: Axera Smart Compute mixed-precision NPU and Axera Smart Vision AI-ISP. According to Gong Huimin, Axera Smart Vision AI-ISP integrates Hyper Night, Hyper HDR and Hyper Loop technologies to achieve image quality enhancement in various complex scenarios. Axera Smart Compute mixed-precision NPU adopts a multi-threaded heterogeneous multi-core design with superior CNN performance, endowing products with industry-leading BEV and Transformer performance. Through integrated design and other methods, it provides the industry's best high-performance and low-power all-in-one solutions and core technologies, reducing BOM costs and ensuring large shipment volumes and supply chain cost advantages. The mature and stable NPU toolchain supports high precision of original mainstream network models, which can all run on the NPU without additional operator supplementation by the CPU or model modification. Enterprises can get started quickly within one hour after receiving the development board, and complete the migration and development of all algorithms within one month.

xADEP Autonomous Driving Development Platform Debuts: Open Ecosystem Accelerates Industrial Common Prosperity

On site, Axera Auto unveiled its autonomous driving development platform xADEP for the first time. Based on the M series intelligent driving chips and integrated with the two core technologies, the platform combines operating systems, BSP, middleware and tools to provide enterprises with an efficient and flexible development environment and software components. It enables users to carry out chip evaluation (chips and algorithms), prototyping (including perception demos and POC demos) and engineering mass production implementation more easily and quickly, helping automakers achieve the engineering implementation of autonomous driving at a faster pace.

The prosperity of China's intelligent driving ecosystem requires multi-party collaboration. Based on chips, Axera Auto will establish trust with customers and ecological partners through an open cooperation model to achieve mutual benefit and win-win results, and deepen cooperation and exchanges with automotive OEMs, Tier 1 system suppliers, algorithm companies and other stakeholders. It will enable enterprises to use better domestic chips and help the intelligent driving market forge a new journey.

According to the list of "Market Share of Domestic SoC Solutions for Passenger Car Standard ADAS Functions in China's Market from January to August 2023" released by Gaogong Intelligent Automobile Research Institute, Axera has risen to the second place in the market share of domestic intelligent driving chips. Against the backdrop of domestic substitution, Axera has gained increasing trust from more enterprises with its independent technological strength, as well as the advantages of high performance and high cost performance.

"Faced with unprecedented opportunities, Axera will continue to provide reliable, safe, cost-reducing and efficiency-boosting intelligent driving solutions, and take practical actions to help China's automotive industry achieve intelligent upgrading," said Qiu Xiaoxin. Axera adheres to long-termism: on the one hand, it continuously deepens technological research and development and improves independent technological capabilities; on the other hand, it actively opens up to deepen exchanges and cooperation, and march towards a boundless future of Chinese chips together with the industry.