BYD chairman Wang Chuanfu unveiled the Xuanji A3 chip on May 28, 2026. Credit: BYD
- BYD plans to debut its in-house developed Xuanji A3 chip in a new production vehicle under the Denza brand in 2027.
- BYD unveiled the Xuanji A3 in May, China’s first smart driving chip built on a 4nm process.
BYD (HKEX: 1211) plans to equip a new Denza-brand production model with its in-house developed Xuanji A3 smart driving chip for the first time in 2027, according to a Sunday report by local media outlet LatePost.
The company unveiled the Xuanji A3 on May 28, China’s first smart driving chip built on a 4nm process. This marks a key step in BYD’s vertical integration in the smart driving space, though the timing for mass production was not disclosed.
A smart driving chip typically needs at least a year to go from tape-out to deployment in a vehicle, LatePost cited an employee of an ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance System) solution provider that develops its own chips as saying.
The chip itself, algorithm deployment, and vehicle integration all need to be verified one by one, so the window for getting a chip into a car is hard to compress, the person said.
Information released by BYD shows that a single Xuanji A3 chip delivers more than 700 TOPS of computing power. Three chips working together provide a combined total of over 2,100 TOPS, supporting L3 and L4 autonomous driving.
The company said the Xuanji A3 consumes 20% less power per unit of computing power than comparable products. After optimization with in-house developed algorithms, its computing power utilization has improved by 100%.
Developing proprietary chips is becoming a key strategy for Chinese EV makers to build a moat in the AI era. Nio Inc (NYSE: NIO), Xpeng (NYSE: XPEV), and Li Auto (NASDAQ: LI) have all launched their own in-house developed smart driving chips and put them into mass-produced vehicles.
BYD has been working on chips for more than two decades. The company set up its integrated circuit design department in 2002, the predecessor of BYD Semiconductor.
In 2008, BYD acquired Ningbo Zhongwei Semiconductor, thereby entering the IGBT field. It has since gradually achieved self-development and self-production in areas including power semiconductors, MCUs, and power management.
BYD said its chip R&D team now exceeds 7,000 people, and it has four R&D bases and five wafer fabs. The company’s cumulative R&D investment in semiconductors has surpassed 100 billion yuan ($14.71 billion).
Still, vertical integration in intelligence is far more complex than in electrification, LatePost noted.
Power semiconductors mainly serve the electric drive, electronic control, and energy conversion segments. In contrast, ADAS chips are used in driver-assist, which is more readily perceived by users, and must evolve in tandem with algorithm models, sensor solutions, domain controllers, and the electronic/electrical architecture.
This is one reason BYD moved its driving chip business into its new technology institute. In the first half of 2024, the institute integrated two smart driving teams, the report noted.
Since then, businesses including smart driving software, the cockpit, driving domain control hardware, and underlying software have also been transferred to the institute.
Beyond self-development, BYD has long used external solutions as well. Suppliers for its God’s Eye smart driving system include Momenta and Huawei. When God’s Eye was launched last February, BYD’s driving engineers already exceeded 5,000.
Meanwhile, BYD’s chip team has seen recent personnel changes. Zhou Yan, a former director at Zeku, smartphone maker Oppo’s chip design subsidiary, who mainly worked on SoC chip IP design, left BYD in April.
Zhou subsequently joined a chip startup, according to LatePost.
The Xuanji A3 chip supports L3 and L4 autonomous driving, marking BYD’s full-chain control over assisted driving.
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