According to reports from Electronic Enthusiasts,NIO’s self-developed advanced smart driving chip “Shenqi NX9031” has started technology licensing, providing technical authorization to an automotive chip company. The Shenqi NX9031 involved in this technology licensing utilizes a 5nm automotive-grade process, with actual computing power approximately four times that of NVIDIA’s Orin-X.Industry insiders have revealed that different licensing methods correspond to different contract values. If it is a single IP license, the cooperation fee is usually in the millions of dollars; if it is a system-level SoC technology license, the order value could reach hundreds of millions.
The Shenqi NX9031 is NIO’s first self-developed smart driving chip, which adopts a 5-nanometer automotive-grade process with over 50 billion transistors. It was first unveiled at the NIO DAY event in December 2023 and announced successful tape-out in July 2024. In April 2025, with the delivery of the NIO ET9 model, the Shenqi NX9031 officially entered mass production, becoming the world’s first 5-nanometer automotive-grade smart driving chip.The Shenqi NX9031 features a 32-core CPU architecture, capable of processing over 60 trillion instructions per second, providing exceptional task concurrency capabilities. Its built-in high dynamic range high-performance ISP can achieve a pixel processing capability of 6.5G Pixel/s, with processing latency of less than 5ms, ensuring rapid and clear processing of large amounts of image data even in complex environments. Additionally, the chip is equipped with LPDDR5x RAM at a rate of 8533Mbps, combined with a self-developed inference acceleration unit (NPU), enabling flexible and efficient execution of various AI algorithms, delivering an extremely safe and efficient smart driving experience.The Shenqi NX9031 has the industry’s highest level of native safety design, with dual-chip millisecond-level backup capabilities providing users with the highest level of safety assurance. Under extreme conditions, this chip ensures safe and reliable operation, supporting ultra-low latency and ultra-fast response for integrated smart safety.The NIO smart driving chip project officially started in 2021, with a research and development team of over 600 people covering the entire process of chip design, verification, and testing. NIO CEO Li Bin has revealed that the R&D investment for the NX9031 is equivalent to the cost of building 1,000 battery swap stations, with each station estimated at 1.5 to 3 million yuan, totaling an investment of several billion yuan.During the R&D process, the NIO team overcame numerous challenges. In 2023, at a critical moment when the front-end design of the chip was nearing completion, an important partner suddenly decided to end its business in China. Faced with this unexpected situation, the NIO team withstood the pressure and quickly established its own relevant capabilities, ultimately not only overcoming the difficulties but also advancing the overall progress by at least four months ahead of schedule.In July 2024, the successful tape-out of the Shenqi NX9031 marked a solid step for NIO in the field of smart driving chips. After three years of R&D testing, some performance indicators exceed those of industry-standard chips, and the mass production time is several months earlier than NVIDIA’s next-generation smart driving chip Thor-U. In April 2025, with the delivery of the NIO ET9 model, the Shenqi NX9031 officially entered mass production, ushering in a new era of smart driving.The initiation of this technology licensing is also an important milestone in the history of the NIO smart driving chip project. It not only brings new revenue sources to NIO but also injects new momentum into the widespread application of its chip technology and the development of smart driving technology.
Statement: This article is reported by Electronic Enthusiasts, please indicate the source above when reprinting. For group discussions, please add WeChat elecfans999, for submission of interview requests, please send an email to [email protected].
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