The computing power of the Momenta BMC 7X is expected to exceed that of Nvidia’s Orin-X, while offering a more competitive price point.
On December 19, Chinese media reported that Momenta has begun delivering its in-house autonomous driving chip for vehicle deployment.
The chip, provisionally named BMC 7X, is paired with Momenta’s R6 Flywheel foundation model, forming a combined hardware-and-algorithm solution, with the first global production model already confirmed.
According to the report, the computing power of the Momenta BMC 7X is expected to exceed that of Nvidia’s Orin-X, while offering a more competitive price point.
Momenta’s in-house chip program began in 2023, when the company absorbed a core chip design team following the dissolution of OPPO’s ZEKU unit. Tape-out was completed in July 2024, and by August 2025 the chip had been powered on and entered vehicle testing.
The progress on chips is underpinned by Momenta’s rapid commercial expansion.
Founder and CEO Cao Xudong previously disclosed that vehicles equipped with Momenta’s urban NOA system surpassed the first 100,000 units by the end of August 2024, reached a second 100,000 by February 2025, and completed a third 100,000 milestone in May.
Currently, Momenta has established partnerships with seven of the world’s top ten automotive groups, with more than 160 vehicle models cumulatively receiving production designations.
From a technology strategy perspective, Momenta is seeking to more tightly bind its algorithmic strengths with proprietary hardware.
In August this year, the reinforcement-learning-based end-to-end R6 Flywheel foundation model made its production debut on the SAIC-GM Buick Electra L7.
Automakers including Tesla, NIO, XPeng, and Li Auto have all moved toward developing their own intelligent driving chips.
Another leading Chinese autonomous driving supplier, Horizon Robotics, has also achieved software-hardware co-optimization through its Journey series chips combined with the HSD algorithm.
Cost remains a core variable that cannot be avoided in chip self-development. At present, Momenta’s mass-production solutions still rely primarily on Nvidia’s Orin and Thor series chips.
Public information shows that the bulk procurement cost of a dual Orin-X setup is around $640 to $760, with a full system often priced at the RMB 10,000 ($1,400) level, and chips accounting for more than 40% of total cost.
As intelligent driving functions accelerate their penetration into lower-priced segments, such a cost structure is difficult to sustain over the long term.
Horizon Robotics’ response has been to push urban assisted driving into the RMB 100,000 ($14,000) vehicle segment through solutions such as the Journey 6P, which have already entered mass production on models including the Changan Deepal L06 and the Chery Exeed ET5.
Cao Xudong has previously stated that within hardware bill-of-materials costs, chips and domain controllers are the most critical components.
Under what he described as an “intelligent driving Moore’s Law,” hardware BOM costs should fall to the RMB 4,000–5,000 ($560–$700) range by 2026 without sacrificing user experience, adding that “only companies that can keep pace with this trajectory will have room to survive.”
Discover more from ChinaEVHome
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
