Geely-backed car tech company takes aim at Nvidia's growing auto business

cnbc.com:

BEIJING — Companies from Nvidia to Huawei are chasing the market for in-vehicle tech as the electric car industry booms, with Ecarx emerging as a new contender.

Since 2017, Chinese car conglomerate Geely's founder and chairman, Eric Li, has been building Ecarx that provides software and chip systems for digital car cockpits and driver-assist.

The company on Wednesday reported its fourth-quarter revenue surged 22% from a year earlier to $263 million. Geely's car brands, such as Lynk and Co, made up 70% of that revenue.

For the same quarter, Nvidia reported automotive revenue fell 4%, year on year, to $281 million, even as CEO Jensen Huang has called the segment the company's "next billion-dollar business."

Nvidia counts Geely's premium electric car brand Zeekr as a customer for its Drive Orin chip, which uses artificial intelligence to power driver-assist capabilities known as «system on a chip.» Li Auto, BYD's Denza brand and Xiaomi are among Nvidia's other automotive customers.

Ecarx co-founder and CEO Ziyu Shen told CNBC in an interview this week that Nvidia enjoys an edge when it comes to AI-based autonomous driving systems.

«We can't compete with them in this area,» he said, but noted there's still about 70% or 80% of the car market that doesn't need such advanced tech, and can buy simpler driver-assist tech focused on safety.

«Safety will be a very important entry point for us,» he said in Mandarin, translated by CNBC.

Ecarx sells its own «system on a chip» Antora 1000 that's used by Lynk and Co.

Shen claimed his company's current products compete directly with Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips, and that new offerings set to beannounced on March 20 will be at the same level as Nvidia's Orin X.

So despite conceding