Text/Da Yu Jie
On March 7, Intel-owned self-driving company Mobileye secretly applied to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for an initial public offering (IPO), the New York Stock Exchange code MBLY, with a capital valuation of $50 billion, which is expected to become one of the largest listed stocks in the U.S. stock market this year.
Intel acquired the company for about $15.3 billion in 2017, and while the number and price of Mobileye's new shares offered has yet to be determined, the market expects a valuation of $50 billion, a quarter of Intel's current market capitalization of about $200 billion!
So can Mobileye really reach that $50 billion valuation?
Why did Mobileye support 50 billion?
According to Intel's latest earnings report, Mobileye's revenue in 2021 was $1.4 billion, up 43% year-on-year, and its operating profit was $460 million. If Mobileye can continue its good momentum this year, it will generate about $2 billion in revenue for Intel.
In terms of sales, one of the key products in mobileye's product line is the Mobileye EyeQ series of chips, which also achieved good sales results. For example, in 2019, the EyeQ series of chips shipped 17.4 million yuan for the whole year, accounting for 20% of the total market, with a net income of $879 million. It remained profitable in 2020, up 22% from the same period last year.
According to Yole, the global market for operational ADAS and radar, cameras, and lidar reached $8.6 billion in 2020. Obviously, as the leader of this track, Mobileye's valuation of $50 billion is achievable.
Amnon Shashua, CEO of Mobileye
Not only that, Buton Shashua, founder and CEO of Mobileye, also said, "Mobileye has accelerated its growth since joining the Intel family, and has almost tripled its annual chip shipments, revenue, and employees since the acquisition!" ”
So how did Intel discover such a great automotive technology company?
We know that Intel is one of the "big factories" that participated in the autonomous driving market earlier, and after keenly smelling the "fragrant food" of automatic driving, Intel, whose main industry in the computer, is too late to develop independently. At this time, Mobileye, a company with complete autonomous driving software and overall solutions, appeared "in front of the eye".
The world's leading automotive technology research and development company
Source for Mobileye's headquarters in Jerusalem, CleanTechnica
Israel-born Mobileye is an automotive technology research and development company and the world's largest supplier of L2-level autonomous driving chips. Founded in 1999 and listed in 2014, it once had a market capitalization of $13.92 billion. It was acquired and delisted by Intel in 2017.
Mobileye's founder, Amanon Shashua, a former professor of computer science at the Hebrew University, applied academic research to vision system technology solutions that provide adaptive cruise control and lane change assist for driverless cars, enabling driverless cars to detect vehicles while driving using only cameras and software algorithms on the processor.
Mobileye's main product is the monocular vision ADAS system, and it is also the first company to enter the advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) industry, and the company also has a global leadership in the development of driving policies for computer vision, autonomous driving and big data insights.
Such a world-leading automotive technology research and development company has also encountered a crisis of trust, the most famous of which is the "breakup" with Tesla.
Mobileye's crisis of trust
Mobileye's "fame" was first known to the public by Tesla. On July 26, 2016, as a partner in Tesla's Autopilot technology, Mobileye unilaterally announced that it had parted ways with Tesla. There are many reasons for "breaking up", the most important of which is that people tend to be in a car accident.
In May 2016, Tesla owner Joshua Brown was killed after colliding with a truck after using semi-autopilot mode while driving a Model S car. The car accident cast a shadow over the autonomous driving circle, and many people have raised strong questions about the safety of autonomous driving.
For this accident, Tesla and Mobileye have their own opinions:
Tesla emphasized that the main cause of the accident was the camera and radar provided by Mobileye to identify the error, and this kind of shirking responsibility made Mobileye feel slightly "unhappy". Mobileye believes that if it were not for Tesla's overly broad autonomy permission for car owners, such a serious accident would not have occurred.
Mobileye, which has been "abandoned" by car companies
As can be seen from the Tesla incident, Mobileye is cautious and conservative in its permission opening. For example, car companies cannot provide mobileye with a system to modify and adjust the algorithm. This practice of not being "open" enough has also led to Mobileye being "abandoned" by many car companies.
Not only that, as technology giants such as Google, Apple and Tesla open the era of independent chip research and development, coupled with the left and right attacks of chip industry competitors such as NVIDIA and Black Sesame, the crown of Mobileye industry leader is also in jeopardy.
On November 16, 2021, BMW Announced a partnership with Qualcomm to adopt the Qualcomm Snapdragon Ride autonomous driving platform in its next generation of smart cars, which means that Mobileye's cooperation with BMW is coming to an end.
In terms of domestic vehicles, WEILAI announced on January 10, 2021 that a new generation of electric vehicles will use NVIDIA DRIVE Orin system-level chips. NIO once worked very closely with Mobileye, and once handed over the research and development of L4 or more to Mobileye.
The ES8 is also the world's first mass-produced model equipped with mobile EyeQ4 chips.
So why did Weilai "abandon" Mobileye and hold hands with NVIDIA? It is because self-driving companies such as Weilai have the need for independent secondary development on the early computing platform. Obviously, Mobileye can't satisfy it anymore.
NIO ES8 I image source CnEVPost
On June 7, 2021, Ideal announced that the 2021 Ideal ONE was launched, and the new domestic Horizon Journey 3 chip replaced the original Mobileye Q4 chip. Wang Kai, CTO of Ideal Auto, explained the reason, "The company's previous cooperation with Mobileye was provided by the other party, such as perception algorithms, etc. Although the system is mature enough, it is not open enough, and the degree of ideal can participate independently is relatively small." ”
Horizon Journey 3 chip
Although Mobileye, on top of its newly developed EyeQ5, emphasizes the product features of the "Open Software Platform". However, domestic car companies that want to gradually implement full-stack self-development of software algorithms are obviously still not satisfied with mobileye's "OPEN" degree, and they prefer chip products with high openness.
Although many car companies are gradually "abandoning" Mobileye, Mobileye has not lost momentum, and at the International Consumer Electronics Show CES on January 4, 2022, it launched its EyeQ Ultra system integration chip built for autonomous driving, and announced strategic cooperation with Ford, Volkswagen and domestic cars Extreme Krypton.
The listing of Mobileye makes people who are optimistic about it full of hope, believing that a superstar in the automotive chip market is about to rise, and believes that with the eye-catching data of nearly 80% of the market share at present, there is no problem in sitting on the first crown of "ADAS", and it will become the first chip stock. But those who are not optimistic believe that mobileye, once the industry hegemon, will be difficult to turn the tide, and will be gradually divided into market share by competitors such as Nvidia, Qualcomm, Huawei and Horizon. What do you think?