Ex-Baidu AI Scientist Becomes A Billionaire After Shares Of His Self-Driving Tech Startup Jump 16%

Yu Kai, an AI scientist who started an autonomous driving project at Baidu, has joined the billionaire ranks after shares of his startup, Horizon Robotics, jumped almost 16% to a record high on Wednesday.

Yu, chairman and CEO of Horizon Robotics, is the company’s largest shareholder with a 13% stake through his family trust and a wholly-owned investment vehicle. Based on his stake, Forbes estimates his net worth to be just over $1 billion.

The 47-year-old entered the three-comma club less than a week after Beijing-based Horizon Robotics went public in Hong Kong. Last Thursday, the company debuted on the Hong Kong bourse after raising HK$5.4 billion ($695 million) in the city’s largest initial public offering so far this year.

Yu cofounded Horizon Robotics in 2015 with ex-Baidu chief R&D architect Huang Chang and associate director Tao Feiwen. The company develops both the software and hardware for assisted and autonomous driving systems. Its most advanced system is called Horizon SuperDrive, which as per the company is designed to achieve human-like autonomous driving in urban, highway and parking scenarios. Launched in April, the system “theoretically supports” Level 4 automation, one level below full automation and is capable of making decisions in specific conditions without human input, according to its prospectus.

Horizon Robotics’ other systems offer features such as automatic emergency braking and parking assist. The company also licenses its proprietary algorithm and software to its clients so that they can develop their own customized products. The customer roster consists of 27 carmakers, including Volkswagen, South Korea’s Hyundai Motor, and China’s BYD, Geely, Li Auto and NIO, according to its prospectus.

Before it went public, Horizon Robotics attracted a slew of big-name investors. Those include investment firms like Zhang Lei’s Hillhouse Investment Management, Neil Shen’s HongShan (formerly Sequoia China) and Jean Salata’s EQT Private Capital Asia. It is also backed by strategic investors including Robin Zeng’s electric vehicle battery maker CATL, Wang Chuanfu’s Chinese EV carmaker BYD, as well as German auto giant Volkswagen, which in 2023 spent more than $2 billion and took a 60% in a joint venture with Horizon Robotics to develop self-driving technologies for Volkswagen’s vehicles sold in China.

Yu had already made a name for himself in academia for his works in machine learning before he turned entrepreneur. The son of an automotive engineer, he grew up in the Chinese transportation hub of Nanchang and studied electronics engineering before moving to Germany, where he earned a Ph.D. degree in computer science at the University of Munich. He later became head of media analytics at NEC Laboratories America, developing technologies on computer vision and machine learning.

Yu returned to China in 2012 and joined Baidu, where he established the Institute of Deep Learning, focusing on AI technologies. During his three-year tenure at Baidu, Yu was named the deputy head of Baidu Research. There, he initiated an autonomous driving project, setting the groundwork for the Chinese tech giant’s Apollo Go robotaxi business.

When Yu ventured out on his own in 2015, he experienced a bumpy ride at first. Yu disclosed to Chinese tech media GeekPark in a 2023 interview that, while he aspired to develop AI chips that could act as brains for everything from cars to home appliances so that they could have human-like capabilities, he had trouble pinning down the killer applications. Success eluded him until 2019, when Horizon Robotics launched its first assisted driving system equipped with its proprietary chip. That turned out to be good timing, as a year later China outlined a blueprint to achieve mass production of high-level autonomous cars by 2025.

Horizon Robotics is among the autonomous driving tech companies that went public. Chinese robotaxi startup WeRide last Friday debuted on the Nasdaq after raising $440.5 million in its IPO and private placement. Meanwhile, Black Sesame, a Chinese startup that designs chips for self-driving systems, started trading in Hong Kong in August after raising about $130 million.

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