Key Takeaways:
BYD is set to unveil its first in-house autonomous driving chip tonight, joining Xiaomi and Nio in a wave of captive silicon development by China's largest consumer-tech companies.
BYD will debut its first in-house autonomous driving chip at a Shenzhen event tonight, joining Xiaomi and Nio in a push by China's largest consumer-tech companies to design their own silicon rather than buy from Nvidia and Qualcomm. The launch, scheduled for 7:30 pm local time at BYD's global headquarters, includes a dedicated "BYD Chip" zone at the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Auto Show, according to mainland media reports.
"This marks the first time BYD showcases its in-house chip to the public," a person familiar with the matter said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the event had not yet concluded.
The chip, developed by BYD Semiconductor, targets 80 trillion operations per second for autonomous driving compute, according to company disclosures. BYD is also developing a 4nm smart cockpit chip, the BYD9000, in partnership with TSMC and MediaTek. The automaker's "Intelligent Driving for All" initiative, launched in 2025, equips every vehicle it sells with at least Level 2+ autonomous driving functionality, using compute platforms ranging from 100 TOPS to 600 TOPS depending on price segment.
Sourcing those platforms entirely from Nvidia or Horizon Robotics at BYD's production scale — the company is the world's largest EV maker by volume — would transfer enormous margin to foreign suppliers. BYD already produces approximately 75 percent of its vehicle components in-house, including batteries and electric motors.
The Dual-Track Reality
BYD's semiconductor push is more complicated than the vertical-integration narrative suggests. In March 2026, at Nvidia's GTC developer conference, BYD formally signed onto the Nvidia DRIVE Hyperion platform for Level 4 autonomous vehicle development, alongside Geely, Hyundai, and Nissan. The company is simultaneously developing its own AI chips and deepening its dependence on Nvidia for the highest-autonomy tier — a dual-track strategy that reflects the gap between what in-house silicon can deliver today and what BYD's autonomous driving roadmap requires.
Independent verification of BYD Semiconductor's 80-TOPS performance claim has not been published by any named third-party auditor. The figures cited in trade press derive from company disclosures rather than external testing.
China's Captive Chip Wave
BYD's debut follows similar milestones at Xiaomi and Nio, both of which have deployed competitive in-house silicon at process nodes that US export restrictions were designed to keep out of Chinese hands. Xiaomi's XRING O1, launched in May 2025 on TSMC's 3nm N3E node, packs 19 billion transistors and scores above 3,100 single-core and 9,600 multi-core on Geekbench 6, placing it close to Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite. Nio's Shenji NX9031, a 5nm automotive-grade system-on-chip with more than 50 billion transistors and 546 GB/s of memory bandwidth, now powers the company's entire main-brand lineup and has been licensed to external automotive and robotics customers.
All three companies remain dependent on TSMC for fabrication — the Taiwanese foundry holds approximately 90 percent of the market at 3nm and 5nm nodes, with no credible near-term alternative. ASML's extreme-ultraviolet lithography machines, the hardware required for sub-5nm manufacturing, remain unavailable to Chinese foundries under Dutch export controls aligned with US policy. China's chip self-sufficiency rate stood at roughly 33 percent in 2024, according to industry data cited by Nikkei Asia.
For investors, the question is whether BYD's in-house chip can meaningfully reduce its reliance on Nvidia and Horizon Robotics at a scale that moves the margin needle. BYD trades at about 18 times forward earnings, a discount to Tesla's 65 times, reflecting the market's view that vertical integration has limits in the highest-autonomy tiers. If BYD's 80-TOPS chip proves competitive in real-world testing, the savings on procurement alone could add several hundred basis points to gross margin on its lower-trim vehicles — but without independent benchmarks, that remains a thesis, not a conclusion.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
