On August 8, 2024, Black Sesame Technologies, a company specializing in AI chip for smart vehicles, was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Founded in 2016, Black Sesame is a provider of automotive-grade intelligent vehicle computing chips and chip-based solutions. The company has established research and sales centers in Wuhan, Silicon Valley, Shanghai, Chengdu, Shenzhen, Chongqing, and Singapore.

Currently, Black Sesame has launched two major product lines: the Huashan series designed for autonomous driving and the Wudang series focused on cross-domain computing.

The SoCs of Huashan A1000 family is designed for autonomous driving and supports BEV fusion algorithms for L3 and below application scenarios.

The Huashan® A1000 automotive-grade high-performance autonomous driving chip applies to L2+ and L3 level autonomous driving, which is currently the most widely used autonomous driving chip in Chinese mass-produced car companies and the only local chip platform capable of backing integrated domain controllers with a single chip.

It’s reported that Huashan A1000 chip has been in full mass production and adopted by several leading Chinese car manufacturers, including FAW Group, Dongfeng Group, Geely Group, and JAC Group, and has been used in mass-produced models including Lynk & Co 08, Hycan V09, Dongfeng eπ007, and its first pure electric SUV Dongfeng eπ008. The next-generation SoC, Huashan A2000, is currently under development and is expected to be launched in 2024.

The Wudang C1200 family of intelligent vehicle cross-domain computing chips was rolled out in April 2023. It has completed full testing after tape-out, with successful functional and performance verification, and sample chips are now available to customers.

As an “All in one” chip, the C1200 family targets multi-domain integration and cross-domain computing, covering core scenarios of intelligent vehicles with a single chip and thus empowering smart vehicles as a whole. Black Sesame expects to generate revenue from C1200 in 2024 and achieve mass production before 2025.

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(Photo credit: Black Sesame Technologies)

According to a recent report by TrendForce, automotive applications are expected to become the main growth driver of the CIS market, with its share of terminal applications projected to increase from around 9% in 2023 to approximately 15% in 2026.

As self-driving systems become more widespread, the demand for CIS in the automotive industry will continue to increase. Trendforce estimates that the average number of CIS used per car will increase from 3-4 in 2022 to 6-7 in 2026, with the overall market size growing from $1.8 billion in 2023 to over $3 billion in 2026 at a CAGR of over 20%.

On the other hand, due to the stagnation in the number of camera modules, the growth of the smartphone CIS market is expected to be in the low single digits. By 2026, CIS terminal applications in smartphones are predicted to decrease from 63% in 2023 to 51%, while automotive applications are projected to increase from 9% to 15%.

The report offers the following insights into the CIS market for smartphones:

• 10.5% decline in smartphone production in 2022: Due to factors such as war, pandemics, inflation, and inventory adjustments, global smartphone production in 2022 declined by 10.5% to 1.193 billion units, resulting in a 6.7% decline in the shipment of camera modules to 4.46 billion units and a 4% decline in the overall CIS market size to $18.9 billion.
• 5% growth in the CIS market size in 2023: The report predicts that the global smartphone production will increase by 0.9% to 1.203 billion units in 2023, with the shipment of camera modules reaching 4.62 billion units, up 3.6% YoY, driving the overall CIS market size to grow by 5% to $19.8 billion.
• Stagnation in the number of smartphone camera modules: From 2021 onwards, the proportion of shipments of smartphones with four and more rear camera modules has remained at 21%, slightly lower than the 23% in 2020, and is expected to remain at the same level in 2023.
• The trend towards large size and high-resolution CIS: In 2021, Samsung launched the world’s first 200-megapixel CIS, the ISOCELL HP1, while Sony introduced the IMX989 in 2022, marking the official entry of high-end smartphones into the one-inch era.

Additionally, driven by new features such as night photography, it is anticipated that the image quality of smartphone cameras may surpass that of single-lens reflex cameras (SLR) by 2024, resulting in the increase of market size and ASP of CIS.