Intelligent Driving Technology Enterprise "Horizon": A New Starting Point for Hong Kong Listing, Recruiting High-Level Intelligent Driving Talents | Autumn Recruitment Report

"Workplace Bonus" (ID: ZhiChangHongLi)

In 2024, "finding a reliable job" and "recruiting reliable people" remain mutually intertwined challenges. We firmly believe that, aside from traditional large companies, there are still numerous employer companies in the market that are in line with the next era's dividends, waiting to be discovered. The potential of the track, business logic, personnel situation... Mastery and insight into this information determine the job seeker's perspective in choosing a company, as well as the quality and depth of the interview communication.

Anonymous company gossip might be helpful for avoiding job-hunting pitfalls - but those career opportunities with scarcity and growth potential should not be missed due to a random and unsubstantiated comment online. During the spring and autumn seasons with a large volume of recruitment, 36Kr @ Workplace Bonus uses a professional scoring model to screen a batch of "dividend companies" that are recruiting for on-site factory visits. Combining multiple perspectives from investors and headhunters, they ask questions to the employers, bringing you a "one-article-understanding" recruitment report on dividend companies.

The Focus and Rebirth after the Pain ╱ 01

Time is the Strongest Moat ╱ 02

About 「Horizon」, You Can Also Know These Ahead of Other Job Seekers ╱ 03

Workplace Bonus has learned that the intelligent driving technology enterprise 「Horizon」 (Stock Code: 9660.HK) is currently recruiting high-level intelligent driving talents in 2024. The hot recruitment positions include directions such as algorithms, software, hardware, and testing, and the high-level intelligent driving team is one of the recruitment focuses, with typical positions including intelligent driving algorithm engineers.

On October 24, Horizon was listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, with an opening increase of 35%, and its market value once reached HK$64.7 billion. The net proceeds from the fundraising amounted to HK$5.142 billion, making it the largest technology IPO in the Hong Kong stock market this year. From being seen as a "bad business" in the eyes of many to ushering in the golden era of commercialization, Horizon has witnessed the ever-changing nine years of the intelligent driving industry. The "9 years, 32 rounds of fundraising totaling $2.363 billion" has left a deep impression on the capital market, and among the more than 100 investors in the past, many are its customers - this also means that other companies in the industry chain are optimistic about Horizon.

According to Horizon's prospectus, in 2023, the company's operating income was 1.55 billion yuan, and the full-time R & D team had 1,478 people (as of the end of 2023), accounting for more than 70% of the total number of employees; the R & D expenditure was 2.366 billion yuan, of which the employee welfare expenditure was 1.435 billion yuan. From this, it can be calculated that the average annual salary of R & D employees is about 971,000 yuan. Nowadays, the market competition in the intelligent driving industry is becoming increasingly fierce, and the high-level intelligent driving field has become the main battlefield of competition. Horizon has rapidly assembled a thousand-person team in the past year and invested in the R & D and testing of the high-level intelligent driving field. Yu Yao, the marketing director of Horizon's intelligent driving products, told Workplace Bonus that the high-level team will still show an expanding trend in the next one or two years to support the expansion of the upper limit of high-level products.

Before founding Horizon in 2015, CEO Yu Kai was the vice president of Baidu's Institute of Deep Learning. With an algorithm background, when he started his own business, he was evaluated by investors as "not understanding the chip industry". In fact, investing in the intelligent driving chip track ten years ago was not considered a wise choice by most people. Yu Kai himself also admits that the chip is a very "bad" business: The development, testing, and verification cycle of the chip is quite long, and the demand for talents is high. It makes sense that no one has done it for a long time before.

However, even such a "bad business" in the eyes of many can become a "good business". In an interview with the media, Yu Kai frankly stated that "one should compete in areas where there is no competition". When others were not paying attention, Horizon chose the intelligent driving chip track. During the process, it experienced business adjustments and focus. It was not until 2019 that the company's main business line was clarified, focusing on the intelligent driving field, and the Journey series was successively launched, entering the product mass production stage.

Liu Qin from FiveYuan Capital once evaluated Yu Kai as having the "dual-core ability" of CEO + CTO: The role of the CEO requires business thinking and vision, and the role of the CTO requires the combination of one's own knowledge structure and intelligent technology trends.

Although Yu Kai has a software background, he strongly emphasizes the integration of software and hardware. In his view, for a company to gain a foothold in the intelligent driving field, both the chip design ability and the software ability must be strong, and it must be an all-round champion. And this concept runs through the company's business all the time. In addition to chip design and R & D like a traditional chip company, Horizon also invests resources in software development. Its business core positioning is more like an intelligent driving solution provider, providing "nanny-style services" to customers.

"The completion of this Hong Kong listing marks a crucial step for us towards the international market," Dr. Yu Kai said in his speech at the listing ceremony. From the perspective of job seekers who aspire to this company, there is still more room for imagination for Horizon, and there is still a long way to go.
 

"Workplace Bonus" (ID: ZhiChangHongLi)

The Focus and Rebirth after the Pain

Ten years ago, when the artificial intelligence trend just emerged, riding the wave, Horizon CEO Yu Kai resigned from Baidu and started his own business. Adhering to the concept of "competing in areas where there is no competition", Horizon embarked on a more challenging and demanding entrepreneurial path of hardware manufacturing.

"The difference between Horizon and other companies is that what Horizon does is pioneering, with no previous examples to draw from. We can only feel our way forward," said Tan He, the head of the intelligent hardware architecture department. He joined Horizon in 2016 and previously worked at a chip company. He himself is optimistic about the intelligent computing track. After learning about Horizon by chance at an event, he decided to try the job opportunity here.

Most start-up companies will face problems such as shortage of funds, unclear market positioning, and difficulties in product development in the early stages. From its establishment in 2015 to 2019, although Horizon also encountered financing difficulties in the A-round in 2017, it completed five rounds of financing in just a few years.

From being the darling of capital in the early days to facing financing difficulties, Horizon had to rethink its future strategy. At that time, Horizon was beginning to worry about commercialization, and the layoff dynamics at the end of 2019 once pushed Horizon into the spotlight of public opinion.

Layoff for cost reduction, strategic transformation, performance management... There were various opinions about the reasons and intentions of Horizon's layoffs. "Start-up companies have limited resources. If the business is not focused, it is difficult to sustain," Tan He explained to Workplace Bonus that the layoff was actually for the company to focus on the business.

Workplace Bonus learned that at that time, Horizon had layoff actions in five office areas in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Xiamen, and Shenzhen, with a scale of about 500 people. Looking back at the early days of its establishment, Horizon mainly focused on two business lines: AloT and intelligent driving. The original intention of this layout was to expand the potential market space. However, from the results at that time, it dispersed the limited resources of the start-up company. Compared to the overly fragmented AloT market, "the company made up its mind to concentrate resources on focusing on intelligent driving."

Recalling the major business adjustment the company made back then, Liu Chu, the intelligent driving system architect, still has a deep impression. Although his business department was almost not affected, the short-term pain made every colleague feel uncomfortable.

"Fortunately, the correctness of this decision was quickly proven," Tan He analyzed. "After intelligent driving really became a new trend and hotspot in 2020, everyone regained confidence." This year, the financing in the intelligent driving field迎来了 a small spring, and Horizon also clarified its market positioning and business focus.

Since then, Horizon has successively launched the Journey 3 and Journey 5. In April this year, Horizon released the Journey 6 series intelligent driving computing solution, which is regarded by industry insiders as a truly mature generation.

Accompanying the business focus is the focus of the company culture. Tan He told Workplace Bonus that after the business adjustment, Horizon's corporate culture has also focused from the original seven to two: "Accomplish customers. Endure loneliness."

Time is the Strongest Moat

When it comes to the competitive barriers of enterprises, in the eyes of most people, "technology" should be the strongest moat for hard technology enterprises. However, Horizon's answer is "Time".

Just as Yu Kai said, "The intangible accumulation is the most competitive. Crossing the moat of time, the barrier will be left to the latecomers."

"Unlike fast-moving consumer goods like the Internet, the average life cycle of one of our products is 5 to 10 years." Tan He believes that Horizon's barrier benefits from long-term accumulation. "We are oriented towards improving competitiveness and do not pursue quick and easy results. For example, for a principle-based technology like the large model Transformer, when it was not yet the mainstream structural algorithm, the Horizon team had already analyzed it to explore how to make it better."

Before joining Horizon, Yu Yao used to work in the media and consulting companies. "The company is always vision-driven and insists on doing difficult but correct things." Whether observing Horizon from a third-party perspective in the past or becoming a member of Horizon now and personally experiencing the market pattern and product evolution, in his view, this has never changed.

In April this year, Horizon released the Journey 6 series products. Starting from October last year, Horizon has invested a team of more than 1,000 people to specifically develop the high-level solution - SuperDrive based on the combination of J6P software and hardware. Yu Yao disclosed to Workplace Bonus that the SuperDrive high-level intelligent driving system is the key to the technical moat and business ecosystem, and its positioning is to promote the development of the entire industry.

The technology is inseparable from the accumulation of time. "In order to achieve SuperDrive covering more users' commuting scenarios, the test team and product team conducted a large number of functional verification tests and scenario polishing in different road conditions across the country, such as Beijing and Chongqing, cities and rural areas, to understand the challenges in different regions and solve problems."

The value of "long-termism" is also recognized and advocated by the core employees of this company. "The HMI team (Human-Machine Interface) invests a lot of time and energy in the modeling of the driving environment displayed on the car screen. From the perspective of the driver's sense of security and understanding of the system behavior, it pursues a textured interface effect," Liu Chu told Workplace Bonus. Compared to other manufacturers that only have the road, the car, and the person, Horizon can present a more three-dimensional effect, including elements such as trees.

Facing the current highly intense market competition environment, Liu Chu's answer is humble and practical: "There is no strong moat in technology. Currently, the intelligent driving is mainly competitive in terms of the overall cost performance of the product." The price war of new energy vehicles is gradually penetrating into the chip end, and the intelligent driving chip is likely to enter the "price war" melee.

Yu Yao believes that "Profitability is the pressure faced by the entire automotive industry." Workplace Bonus learned that from 2021 to 2023, Horizon's net losses were 2.064 billion yuan, 8.72 billion yuan, and 6.739 billion yuan respectively; the adjusted net losses were 1.103 billion yuan, 1.891 billion yuan, and 1.635 billion yuan respectively. However, Horizon has a relatively high and stable gross profit margin level, with its gross profit margins in 2021 to 2023 being 70.9%, 69.3%, and 70.5% respectively.

The main reason for the loss is the huge R & D expense. From 2021 to 2023, Horizon's R & D expense expenditures were 1.14 billion yuan, 1.88 billion yuan, and 2.366 billion yuan respectively.

High investment and slow return are common problems faced by chip companies. Workplace Bonus learned that currently, in the market view, the autonomous driving industry is still in a stage where the technical capabilities are constantly developing upward and the business model is constantly being refined. During this period, it is necessary for enterprises to continue to invest a large amount of funds on the R & D side to accumulate technical capabilities, and at the same time ensure the commercialization landing as soon as possible. This is the only way for enterprises in this industry to form barriers and turn losses into profits. For listed car companies, fully investing in self-developed intelligent driving software and hardware is not the best solution for performance in the secondary market, so it may not cause greater competitive pressure on Horizon in a short period of time.

"Our industry is still in the early stage, and we are always willing to be a relatively calm and objective player." The HR team believes that the company's current achievements can already reflect a high growth trend in the future. Up to now, the shipment volume of the Journey family's in-vehicle intelligent computing solutions has officially exceeded 6 million sets, obtaining pre-installed mass production cooperation from more than 27 OEMs and 42 OEM brands globally, with a cumulative total of nearly 290 mass production fixed-point vehicle models and more than 130 mass production and listed vehicle models. "As an industrial underlying enabler, we have the largest domestic intelligent driving mass production experience."

When it comes to Horizon's future business focus, Tan He said: First, to do a good job in human-computer interaction in the autonomous driving scene to make the car more anthropomorphic; second, to follow up on general-purpose robots.

About 「Horizon」, You Can Also Know These Ahead of Other Job Seekers
 

Interviewees

Tan He  Horizon  Head of the Intelligent Hardware Architecture Department

Liu Chu  Horizon  Intelligent Driving System Architect

Yu Yao  Horizon  Marketing Director of Intelligent Driving Products

Workplace Bonus: Some technical candidates think that the interview at Horizon is quite difficult. What are the basic quality requirements and expectations for technical talents at Horizon?

 Tan He : For fresh graduates, they should be in line with the general direction and have no shortcomings in basic knowledge (not cross-field). We pay more attention to some project experience, depth, thinking mode, work attitude, learning ability, problem-solving ability, and ability to adapt to the new environment during their school and internship. We prefer those who have certain ideas about their future development and are positive and upward.

In addition, those who have paid attention to the AI hardware category and have project experience in AI computing processors and complex large-scale chips will be given priority.

 Liu Chu : The skills should be relatively matched to the business needs, with a strong drive and initiative; we don't want those who don't actively explore and improve things and are unwilling to make extra efforts.