Horizon Robotics struggles to retain talent even with high salaries of one million yuan. Yu Kai personally sent his colleagues away.
Start - up companies from the Horizon ecosystem are becoming the darlings in the eyes of investors.
On April 8th, Sweet Potato Robotics completed a Series B2 financing of $150 million. It had only been a little over 20 days since its Series B1 financing, and the cumulative amount of the two - round financing reached $270 million (approximately RMB 1.845 billion).
According to Tianyancha, Sweet Potato Robotics was founded in 2024 and has completed three rounds of financing so far. The company's valuation has reached $1.5 billion (approximately RMB 10.251 billion). The list of investors is star - studded, including top - tier investment institutions, industrial capital, and internet giants such as Hillhouse Capital, Wuyuan Capital, Meituan Longzhu, Didi Chuxing, and Vertex Growth under Temasek.
Image source: Tianyancha
Not long after Sweet Potato Robotics finalized its Series B1 financing, Octopus Power, another company focusing on embodied intelligence, secured a seed - round financing of hundreds of millions of yuan. Going back one more month, Boundless Power, which is dedicated to building the "general brain" and "operational intelligence" of robots, also completed a Series Angel + financing of 200 million yuan, with a group of well - known investment institutions standing behind it.
These start - up companies that have been established for only one or two years are being chased by capital. While it's true that they have caught the wave of the industry, there may be another more important reason: the founders of these companies all share the same background - former senior executives or technical backbones of Horizon.
For example, Sweet Potato Robotics itself is a project incubated within Horizon, and its business approach is in the same vein. It acts as a "shovel seller" in the AI era. In the current hot trend of embodied intelligence, it doesn't directly engage in building robots but focuses on making brain chips for robots. Selling shovels during the gold rush may not sound as glamorous as digging for gold, but it has lower risks and stronger certainty.
The Horizon - affiliated companies that have become investment hotspots are far from limited to these. Yuyinan's Vita Power, Shanyi's Jianzhi Robotics, Zhang Yufeng's Boundless Power, Wu Qiang's Houmo Intelligence, Sun Junkai's Zhiwang Future, and Huang Guan's Jijia Vision have all become the targets of capital competition.
Rarely, instead of suppressing or blocking these former employees who left to start their own businesses, Horizon has actually provided financial support. This kind of magnanimity can be attributed to the "benevolence" of its founder, Yu Kai.
In fact, Yu Kai has always been generous not only to those who left to start businesses but also to his in - house partners. In the past year, the average annual salary at Horizon exceeded one million yuan, ranking among the top in the industry. However, this generosity failed to retain core talents, and instead, it has put Horizon in a dilemma.
"Brother Kai" and His Brothers
In the robotics circle, whether it's current employees of Horizon, former senior executives who left to start their own businesses, or investors who have only met Yu Kai a few times, they all call him "Brother Kai" in a surprisingly unified way.
This title is not just out of politeness. Yu Kai returned to China in 2012 and joined Baidu, where he founded the Deep Learning Research Institute, which was the first artificial intelligence R & D institution in a Chinese internet company. In three years, the team led by Yu Kai won the "Highest Baidu Award" three times, breaking the company's record.
In 2015, at the age of 39, Yu Kai decided to start his own business. He founded Horizon Robotics in Beijing with Huang Chang and Tao Feiwen, focusing on AI chips. At that time, they chose "automotive - grade chips" as their entrepreneurial direction, which is more difficult and has a higher threshold than general chip technology.
To make the business successful, Yu Kai also recruited many technical backbones from his Baidu days, including Yuyinan, Shanyi, and Du Dalong. According to Yuyinan's later recollection, Yu Kai only said a simple sentence when inviting him to join - "Let's go and do AI chips together", and he joined without hesitation.
In the following nine years, Yuyinan rose from a front - line technical staff to the person in charge of Horizon's intelligent driving business. He shed his early pure research temperament and gained more of the worldly wisdom from business experience. At the end of 2024, Yuyinan left to found Vita Power and quickly secured a seed - round financing of nearly 100 million yuan. The investors included institutions such as Hillhouse and Yuanjing, as well as Horizon and Baidu Ventures. Even after Vita Power's first super - capable robotic dog started pre - sales, Yu Kai placed an order to support it immediately.
Note: Internet - circulated screenshot
At the beginning of 2025, Zhang Yufeng, the former president of Horizon's intelligent vehicle division, also chose to leave and start his own business, founding Boundless Power. He also received investments from Horizon and Baidu Ventures in the angel - round financing.
Compared with Yuyinan and Zhang Yufeng, Yu Kai's support for Shanyi was more in - depth. Shanyi was one of the first ten employees of Horizon. After leaving in 2016, he co - founded DeepScale Technology with a Tsinghua team. Its business was in some competition with Horizon. Eventually, this company was acquired by Xilinx for $300 million in 2018.
Later, Shanyi started another business and founded Jianzhi Robotics, and he also recruited Du Dalong, who was also an early employee of Horizon. Even though they had some business intersections before, Yu Kai didn't regard Shanyi as an opponent. Instead, Horizon continuously increased its investment in Jianzhi Robotics in the angel round, Pre - A round, and Pre - B round. In 2025, NavInfo made a strategic investment of 1.8 billion yuan to take a controlling stake in Jianzhi Robotics, and NavInfo has a close cooperative relationship with Horizon. Therefore, the outside world generally speculates that Horizon may have played a role in promoting this transaction.
Yu Kai doesn't set barriers or poach talents from his former partners. Instead, he provides them with money and resources, which shows his loyalty. Cui Kedi, the vice - president of Baidu Ventures, evaluated him as "one of the outstanding entrepreneurs in the past decade". Most of the entrepreneurs who came from Horizon have been deeply influenced by him. Zhang Menghan, the president of Hexuan Capital, also mentioned that Yu Kai has always emphasized within the company that business leaders must have the ability to complete a commercial closed - loop independently, which has made entrepreneurs from Horizon extremely capable of "fighting alone".
This entrepreneurial model with mature experience and resources has significantly reduced the trial - and - error cost of hard - tech entrepreneurship, which may be the main reason why Horizon - affiliated companies are highly favored by capital.
A Million - Yuan Annual Salary Can't Retain Talents
Yu Kai's generosity is not only reflected in supporting his former subordinates to start businesses. He is also very generous to his in - house team.
Financial report data shows that as of the end of 2025, Horizon had 2,215 employees, and the total salary was about 2.918 billion yuan. Calculated in this way, the average annual salary was about 1.32 million yuan, a nearly 12% increase compared with 1.18 million yuan in 2024.
Horizon's salary and benefits have always been among the top in the industry. According to the prospectus, in 2023, the company's average annual salary was about 971,000 yuan, ranking second in the industry, only second to Hesai Technology's average annual salary of 993,000 yuan.
Image source: Horizon's 2025 performance announcement
Over three years, Horizon's average annual salary increased from 971,000 yuan before listing to 1.32 million yuan, a cumulative increase of more than 35%. Even though the company suffered a loss of tens of billions in 2025, the employees' salaries not only didn't decrease but continued to increase.
It should have been a beautiful scenario of "following Brother Kai and having a good life", but unfortunately, the high salary failed to retain talents. On the contrary, the core talents of Horizon have been continuously leaving in the past two years, which has become an open hidden crisis in the industry. Regarding the situation of the loss of senior executives and core technical talents, Yuanmeihui also sent a letter to Horizon, but as of the time of publication, no response was received.
Shanyi left, Du Dalong left, Yuyinan also left, and some less - known technical backbones also left one after another. At the beginning of March 2026, 36Kr reported that Chen Peng, the person in charge of Horizon's chip R & D, was about to leave. There were even rumors that Chen Peng would start a business with the former COO.
Yu Kai's generosity has, to some extent, become a curse: he personally trained a group of technical managers who can fight tough battles and then sent them on the entrepreneurial path with real money.
With the continuous outflow of talents, the core talent pool at Horizon's headquarters has been continuously diluted, and new employees need a long time to adapt and grow. As a result, although Horizon has woven a large ecological network, its core team has always been in a state of "bleeding".
The Cost of the "Grand Strategy" Is a Bit High
Yu Kai once admitted that he is a "pathological risk - averse person" and advocates the investment philosophy of Buffett, Munger, and Duan Yongping. He firmly believes that "staying at the gaming table is more important than achieving rapid success". This concept is impeccable in terms of strategy, but it seems a bit contradictory when it comes to talent management.
This is not just Yu Kai's dilemma. Almost all hard - tech companies that have risen from scratch will face the problem of talent outflow. However, the special thing about Horizon is that Yu Kai not only doesn't set up defenses but also actively "fuels the fire" for the outflow of talents. His logic is clear: instead of forcibly blocking them, it's better to invest and support them so that they become part of the Horizon ecosystem.
From a strategic perspective, this is undoubtedly a "grand strategy" - Jianzhi Robotics, Vita Power, Sweet Potato Robotics, and many other Horizon - affiliated start - up companies are gradually forming a "loose yet closely - knit" alliance.
However, from the perspective of Horizon's headquarters, the cost is also obvious: frequent changes in key positions will lead to long - term instability in the core team, and R & D efficiency may also be greatly reduced. In 2025, the company's R & D expenditure was 5.154 billion yuan, accounting for as high as 137% of the revenue. A considerable part of it may have been wasted on repeated construction. When old employees leave and new employees take over, they need to re - familiarize themselves with the structure, adapt to the team, and make trial - and - error, which invisibly causes a huge waste of resources.
Fortunately, Horizon's foundation has not been shaken. In 2025, the company's revenue was 3.758 billion yuan, a year - on - year increase of 57.7%. The Journey 6 series of chips have been mass - produced and installed in mainstream car manufacturers such as BYD and Li Auto, and its market share still ranks in the first echelon. The management has set the goal of achieving break - even in 2027, leaving a window period of more than two years.
Image source: Horizon's 2025 performance announcement
The core path planned by Yu Kai for Horizon is "cockpit - driving integration". He believes that in the future, intelligent driving and the cockpit will be integrated at the underlying chip level to form a new intelligent platform, which will be the company's core battle in the future. However, there are strong competitors on this path. Car manufacturers such as BYD and Li Auto have entered the field of self - developed chips, and old customers have gradually become competitors. Huawei and NVIDIA are continuously increasing their efforts, and the competition in the industry is becoming more and more fierce.
To win this tough battle, a stable and powerful core team is needed. However, Yu Kai is also doing another thing: using his generosity to continuously send out team backbones.
There is always a subtle tension between these two goals. Some people say this is a matter of vision, while others think it is a misstep. No matter what the final answer is, one thing is certain: as long as Brother Kai is still at the gaming table, the comings and goings of his brothers around him will continue.
Some people stay at their posts, some leave to start businesses, some join the ecological subsidiaries, and some completely fade out of the robotics circle. Yu Kai sits at the center, trying to weave this ecological network bigger and bigger with high salaries, equity, investments, and invitations of "let's work together".
However, whether Horizon at the center of the network can withstand the consumption caused by talent flow is the ultimate test that Yu Kai really has to face.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Yuanmeihui", author: Yuanmeihui, published by 36Kr with authorization.