In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen - Horizon Robotics CEO: Car Chips, Mind-Off Driving and China's Speed

Episode Date: September 30, 2026

Horizon Robotics CEO: Car Chips, Mind-Off Driving and China's SpeedWho makes the brain inside a self-driving car? Nicolai Tangen sits down with Dr. Kai Yu, founder and CEO of Horizon Robotics, the... company supplying the chips and software behind one in three intelligent cars on Chinese roads. They discuss why he never wanted to build a car of his own, the competition in a market that launched 580 new models in six months, and the road to hands-off driving by 2028 and fully mind-off cars by 2035. Kai Yu also shares his Zen philosophy of focus and why he believes robots will hand freedom back to humans. Tune in!In Good Company is hosted by Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management. New episodes every Wednesday, and don't miss our weekly wrap-up on Friday’s.The production team for this episode includes Isabelle Karlsson and PLAN-B's Guttorm Andreasen and Håkon Klemsdal. Background research was conducted by Simran Sahajpal.Watch the episode on YouTube: Norges Bank Investment Management - YouTubeWant to learn more about the fund? The fund | Norges Bank Investment Management (nbim.no)Follow Nicolai Tangen on LinkedIn: Nicolai Tangen | LinkedInFollow NBIM on LinkedIn: Norges Bank Investment Management: Administrator for bedriftsside | LinkedInFollow NBIM on Instagram: Explore Norges Bank Investment Management on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 In some sense, this is a terrible business, you know, heavy investment, very slow return. But in my view, sometimes terrible business means great business, because that's an entry barrier for all the other newcomers is extremely high. Hi everybody, I'm Nicola Tangen, the CEO of the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund. Ten years ago, we all assumed self-driving cars would come out of Silicon Valley. But today, the most advanced cars on the road are Chinese and Western carmakers are going to China to buy the technology. Nobody sits closer to the shift that my guest,
Starting point is 00:00:48 Yu Kai, who's the founder and CEO of Horizon Robotics, which supplies the chips and software that let Chinese cars drive themselves. So one of China's leading AI scientists before he became an entrepreneur, and few people can explain better how China got there and where it goes next. So, Kai, welcome. Hi, Nicola. Let's just start with a simple question. What does Horizon robotics do?
Starting point is 00:01:13 Well, essentially, what we are doing is the computing platform for all generic robots, including self-driving cars. But of course, our current business is probably 95, nearly 100% focusing on cars, passenger vehicles. So if I sit in a car that you supply into, what is your chip do? Well, essentially, it's running the software all the way from camera perception to trajectory planning and control. So essentially, it's kind of like brain for all the cars. Now, your chips run roughly one out of four cars.
Starting point is 00:02:05 in China. Just tell me about the one one out of three I think that's our latest track record. Thank you. Well done. Who are your customers? Well, you know the major Chinese OEMs like a B.D, Chile, you know, cherry, Chang'an, Great War and also the global some of the global OEMs like Volkswagen, Toyota, Suzuki, so quite some local domestic and global players. Who do you compete with? Oh, very good question. I think like a mobile eye, you know, and also Huawei and there are quite a few domestic players like Black Sesame. I'm not sure if you ever
Starting point is 00:02:58 heard of that. And the KwonKal and Media Texas instrument, you know, Runners us, NXP, So actually a lot of global and China technology companies. Why are you the best? Oh, well, very good question. I think it's really because we are very focused. You know, we focus on this single one thing to enable auto driving and all the way to robotics. We are not doing anything, nothing else.
Starting point is 00:03:36 So I think the intensity of focus is one thing. The other thing, I would say, is fundamentally our vision and mission. Because if you look at the name of our company, you know, 11 years ago, when we founded this company, we named our company Horizon Robotics. Right. Back to 11 years ago, in China, there was even no such a business at all. Yeah, and even eBay business was just starting. Right.
Starting point is 00:04:09 And we had this vision, which was not an existing opportunity. So we envision in the future the world will be full of all kinds of different robots, you know, working in farming field, manufacturer, assembly line, and the logistic warehouse, you know, every house, home, service, and elderly kids. here, and also, of course, self-driving cars. So we envision there should be a unifying platform, just like Windows and Intel did for personal computing, and just like, you know, Arm and Android,
Starting point is 00:04:53 what they are doing for mobile computing. So we envision in the future they're going to be such a kind of like a computing platform, which is generic for all kind of, you know, robotics working in different, across different vertical domains. When did you, when exactly did the vision hit you? Well, that's very good question. Were you in the shower or were you walking in a mountain, so just what? Well, that's very good question.
Starting point is 00:05:25 I think exactly you are right. I think the vision actually hit me, not I find this. opportunity or this vision. Well, I don't know. You know, I have been working in machine learning for over 30 years. You know, since my early days as a junior student in college. And by chance I read a book about machine learning. And I was so amazed that it's so fantastic.
Starting point is 00:06:01 to develop a computer algorithm. One day, it can be like a human brain, getting smarter and smarter over experience. Yeah, by learning more and more from data. So then I decided to devote my whole career into this single subject machine learning. Yeah, and that was for my thesis, for my undergraduate and my thesis for my master
Starting point is 00:06:30 and also for my PhD. And also for my first job, back to my days in Simmons, and later to Silicon Valley, join the AEC labs in Silicon Valley, and then later joined Baidu, and then later funded Horizon Robotics. So I changed my locations, and I change kind of different roles from, you know, individual researcher to a team leader to head of research labs, and later become a founder of,
Starting point is 00:07:00 technology company. So I changed my roles. But there's one thing, you know, remains never changed, which is my mission and my vision to develop machine learning algorithms, to make machines getting smarter and smarter. Two companies that we've had on a podcast, XPeng and Xiaomi, they also make phones, cars in addition to chips. So how do you, why did you decide never to build a car. I always position ourselves going to be like Microsoft and Intel for not for PC but for robots. And I think a platform, an enabling platform, I think it's a much more interesting positioning, not just about like a business model, but also about in terms of the impact you're going to make to the whole world. You know, for example,
Starting point is 00:08:01 are, you know, back to the days of a personal computing area. You know, Windows and Intel, they are not just, you know, help or enable like Lenova or Dell. They actually help the entire mankind, you know, get into the new kind of sort of technology civilization or new area of technology with a personal computer to enable all the white color people to, to increase dramatically their productivity. It's what's an amazing impact. So show home, they actually maybe help one brand, you know, to become very, very appealing, very, very attractive to consumers.
Starting point is 00:08:49 But I want to enable and help all the brands, all the cars. Is it difficult to build a car? Yeah, of course. So, but you don't have the, you have the, technology, you have the chips. So if I ask you to build a car, how long time will it take you? You know, I want to achieve like a horizon inside, you know, that's, I think that's a much bigger dream, much more interesting for me. I don't want to be a car maker, you know. And I want to help more car brands to become more attractive. Now, the Chinese car market is kind of
Starting point is 00:09:28 brutally competitive. Yeah. What is driving in the Chinese car market just now? Is it price, intelligence, just what is it? Well, the current Chinese car market is really crazy. I think you don't see any market like here. There are, you know, I don't know how many, probably 60 or to 70 different car brands. And for the first half of this,
Starting point is 00:09:58 year more than 580 new car models launched. And it's an extremely, you know, tough market. But I think the market is really driven by competition. This is, but on the other hand, it's also driven by consumer demand. So consumers are really expecting, you know, more and more, you know, smart features, you know, automatic parking, you know, autonomous driving, and more fancy entertainment assistance.
Starting point is 00:10:37 And I think all of those factors driving the market, not just competitive, but also very innovative. What does it do to Chinese manufacturers when you have such strong competition at home that when you get out to, let's say, Europe, is it just like easy-p-se to compete? Relative? I think we position ourselves.
Starting point is 00:11:05 First, we are not competing with any carmakers. We are actually enabling them, we are helping them. We are building strong partnerships with all the carmakers and all the ecosystem partners, including the automotive suppliers, for example, Bosch, Denzel, and many other global and local suppliers. And our philosophy is really make friends and make long-term trust with our customers and partners. Essentially, this is fundamentally in the gene of our company. So we don't have in a sense of we don't have too much culture from the competition perspective,
Starting point is 00:11:52 but more from what kind of value we can create. But luckily, if you look at our business, I mean, fundamentally compared to like those car makers, we are not so crowded, right? And if you look at China, I think pretty much the three top players for the automotive computing, I think, namely nowadays, I think it really consolidated to Nvidia, Huawei, and Horizon robotics. Not very crowded. it. Partially because we choose the position, this business is having extremely high entry barrier. It's not like, okay, a bunch of guys having VC funding and easily get into the business, because this is automotive. Automotive means mission critical, and it has to having the highest standard for the quality, for the safety, you know. And let's say,
Starting point is 00:12:53 We are doing this chip design for automotive, right? It's not like a consumer type of silicon. And it has to go through all the very regular and tough qualification and testing process. So normally, if we initiate a new project, a new generation of product. So it will take three to four years to get the product, the chip and the solution ready for, for car makers. And then, if luckily enough, we won a new nomination from one car maker. And then we need to also go through the cycle of the production for the car platforms.
Starting point is 00:13:36 And that's what's going to be another three to five years. In China, two years, right? For global OEMs, they are slower than typically five years. So then think about it's going to be at least from five years to eight years for the cycle. So in some sense, this is terrible business, you know, heavy investment, very slow return. But in my view, sometimes terrible business means great business, because that's an entry barrier for all the other newcomers is extremely high. And then I think a good business is something, well, you can sleep well overnight. And that's my.
Starting point is 00:14:22 opinion. Talking about sleeping well and the autonomous journey. So you split between hands off, eyes off, mind off. These are kind of the three steps that a car will go through. And in January last year, you put dates on them. So we'll have eyes off in three years. I'm sorry, hands off in three years. We'll have ice off in five, mind off in 10. Just where are we today? Well, we are in a very good progress, I think. You know what? In the industry, they're sort of like standard from like level two, level three, level four, level five. It's really from the engineering standpoint for the consumers.
Starting point is 00:15:09 You know, they have no clue what is level three. So I always try to connect our technology and the product to something where my mom, at least, she can understand. So that's my way to interpret the technology state. from, you know, hands-free, hands-off, ice-off, and minds-off. So would you tell your mom just now? Right now, we are in a very good progress to achieve fully hands-off. Yeah. I think then I said that, I made that statement the last year, right?
Starting point is 00:15:41 So that means by end of 2028, we can achieve fully hands-off. And then by the end of 2030 to achieve fully ice-off. And then by the end of 2035, going to be 100% minds off. Basically, you can sleep in a running car. And I think we are in a very good progress. And if you look at our product, our latest product, namely the software stack called Horizon SuperDrive, running on our Journey 6T SOC,
Starting point is 00:16:21 Currently, essentially, you can feel completely hands-free. Yeah. It's just like a new version, a smarter version of automatic transmission. If you remember, over the last 20 years, so the whole industry, the car industry, evolved from the manual transmission, and you need to control all the gears. and later getting into the automatic transmission, right? But now I call this getting into the smarter version of automatic transmission.
Starting point is 00:17:00 Basically, you just need to stay watching ahead, and nothing else you need to take care. What is the lacking? What part of the technology are you still? What's the critical element which is the left here? Well, I think we need a much bigger knowledge to test. And we need to have better numbers for statistics. And then to prove that the technology is safe enough to claim ISOF, right? So I think already we are in very progress to approach the stage of hands-off.
Starting point is 00:17:42 But I think we need a much bigger knowledge to test and prove ISOF. Do you build your own AI models? Sure, sure. The self-driving model. Yeah. You remember, we position ourselves as a Vintel, right? Not just the Intel. We position ourselves as Vintel.
Starting point is 00:18:06 And I think Vintel is the really, I think it's an amazing business model. And where is the kind of the future breakthrough going to come? Is it the model, the data, the chips? Well, it's a combination of three factors together. I think this is a typical formula of today AI business. I think you need to have a much bigger compute running locally on the vehicle. And also you need to continuously collecting bigger and bigger data. But also meaningful data.
Starting point is 00:18:45 It's not just quantity, but also quality. That means you need to collect many, many of the meaningful chronic cases. And I think also you need bigger and bigger models in terms of a number of parameters. How many people are you now in the company? Around 2000. What do they do? I think we are very technology-savvy company. So most of our employees, they are engineers.
Starting point is 00:19:25 They are either software engineers or hardware engineers. And they are working extremely hard. Because you don't produce the chips. I mean, you old source the production, right? Exactly. We are like typical, for the hardware side, we are typical fabulous company. We design a chip, but we don't manufacture the chip. out of source to our partners.
Starting point is 00:19:54 And also we developed the software, the end of the neural network for self-driving. What does working hard mean now? Very good question. You know, we are kind of like typical technology culture. We don't have the rules or the policy. You need to come to work in 8 a.m. Actually, typically, most of our engineers,
Starting point is 00:20:17 they come to work around 10 a.m. And they freely organize their working time, and there's no rules like, okay, before which time you are not supposed to leave office. So there's no such a thing. I think the sense of ownership of our engineers, I think it's very high. What do you think on average? How long days do you think on average they work? Actually, I have no clue. And quite some of our engineers, they even know working from home, right?
Starting point is 00:20:57 Yeah. We don't measure that by, like, working hours. I don't know some of the China companies measure by working hours. We never measure that. We just, you know, caring about, you know, what kind of, how far we can achieve. When you say that the model time in China is, you know, the cycle time is two years versus five years in Europe. What explains the difference?
Starting point is 00:21:28 As far as I know, because I work with so many Chinese OEMs, they are working extremely hard. They have a very strong sense of competition. Yeah, that's urged them to try all the ways to improve the process, you know. And, yeah, but they work really hard. Yeah. For example, they don't have summer occasions, like a 30 or 40 working days off during the summer, right? So I think they are working really hard. What's the key to innovation? How do you create a really innovative culture? I think first of all, we are a company, you know, knowledge. really is driven by
Starting point is 00:22:24 the vision and we are kind of we are not like opportunity driven, right? We are not competition driven. We work on that because we really want to push
Starting point is 00:22:40 the boundary of the entire society and the industry. I think it is self motivation is very important. That means we don't want to be the same as any other company. We don't want to do
Starting point is 00:22:55 sort of things other companies are doing. So that's why I also explain that's why our business essentially is not so crowded in China. This is actually a very
Starting point is 00:23:09 real phenomenon because in China, if any business looked even somewhat interesting, not even profitable, but somewhat interesting, right? Typically, hundreds of companies jump in to compete. It's crazy. Look at today the kind of, you know, AI and the embodied AI business, right,
Starting point is 00:23:32 so many companies and also so many car companies. I think we are, we are kind of working on something, you know, which we believe, but not necessary, you know, other people love to jump in. The fact that you have all these companies jumping in into these sectors, what does it mean in terms of the supply chain and the various choices you have as a manufacturer? How does it all go together? For us, we just choose the best to work on. Because we don't have any luxury to be, I mean, something we need to be very innovative. For example, the chip architecture, the compiler, the algorithm, the algorithm, a system,
Starting point is 00:24:18 some of the things, we are just so much respecting the tradition. Because this really means life and death mission critical. If any car accidents happened, it's not just impacting the driver or passenger itself. It's sometimes a public safety issue. So we need to be very, very religiously, you know, to respect the tradition. So we just choose the best partner. to work with. What advantage do you think it is for Chinese auto manufacturers now
Starting point is 00:24:57 to have that breadth and depths of supply chain, which we don't have in Europe? Well, yeah. You know, I worked very closely with many global automotive companies, like Bosch, Denzel, you know, Volkswagen. I talked to them about that. It turned out actually over the last maybe two days, decades also, China become a country where the supply chain of components and technologies
Starting point is 00:25:30 is so rich. This is exactly one of my friends who is German. He told me, he thinks China nowadays is like a wonderland for supply chain. Because no matter how kind of new ideas, then you can always find partners and suppliers in China, either supply the technological component to you or work with you to actually fulfill your requirement. And the speed is incredible, right. So I think that's give China an overall very fantastic environment to innovate.
Starting point is 00:26:10 Yeah, so the kind of overall ecosystem is there. Right. You don't need to, you know, write an email to somewhere else. Yeah, it just make a phone call, I send a Vichita message, or just take a flight from Beijing to Shenzhen, just three hours. And essentially, nowadays, you know, including myself and also all of my friends, we travel so frequently within China. We take like entire China as one village.
Starting point is 00:26:44 When you see, you know, client of your such as Volkswagen laying off 100,000 people, what are the kind of reflections you are having? Well, we actually position ourselves as like a strong partner to Volkswagen and many other global companies. Because we don't face any competition, let's say in Europe, right? If you look at in Europe, there's a semiconductor companies like Infine, NXP, and also ST Electrical Microelectronics. And we are not competing with them because they have their focus on, for example, analog chips and also the MCUs and those those. kind of their strengths. But we are working on something like
Starting point is 00:27:47 computing for cars, which is exactly what they're not doing. And then in that sense, we find a very, very strong synergy to work together. So in my view, I think we also, I think both
Starting point is 00:28:02 European friends and Chinese need to change the mindset. You know, for example, like in a past, let's say, let's say several decades. The general pattern was like a global company trying to make money from China, right?
Starting point is 00:28:22 And typically for automotive. Nowadays it's getting very difficult, right? And now there could be some other mindset. Let's say, oh, Chinese companies, now we have a very competitive product. We need to get into Europe to take their market shares, and make money from them. That's also not healthy, right?
Starting point is 00:28:46 I think we all need to embrace a new mindset, which is a win-win mindset, you know. Now the new opportunity is for us to work together, right, to explore new market, to launch more competitive products, and to make money, make profit, create value for global. So this is kind of the mindset I share deeply with many, of my friends in Germany, in France, and in other countries.
Starting point is 00:29:21 Your company is called Horizon Robotics. How far is a car from a robot now? Still a little bit long way to go, but not that long. I'm not that far. I think probably, as I said, in two years, by the end of 2008, the country, the country, the country, the country, the other passenger vehicles in China will be hands-free. Right. So it's already kind of semi-robots. And what is your business going to be in the robotics business? Actually, we are already a leading player in China right now.
Starting point is 00:30:00 One of the, I think, top two players for the generic robotics computing. Yeah, we are enabling a lot of robotics companies. Yeah, we are supplying like a, computing solutions to enable them. What's the overlap in technology and systems between self-driving cars and, you know, humanoid robotics, for instance? Yeah, that's a very good question. And I believe eventually the two business, the technology, will really converge
Starting point is 00:30:37 and eventually become a unifying computing platform. Right. So cars will become robots and no big difference, I think. The cars will sense the environment and understand the intention of the pedestrian surrounding, you know, the surrounding traffic participants, and also will understand the gesture of the policeman and making decisions in very sophisticated traffic environment. I think that's basically fundamentally no big difference from any other computing pattern of robots. So eventually it will really converge.
Starting point is 00:31:31 Tell me about the speed of development of humanoid robots in China now. Well, you know what? it's crazy. Again, there are like hundreds of such companies. That's so intense. But I think all of them are still a really long way to go. If you look at the automob driving, you know, how many years? I think Horizon Robotics probably is the first automatic driving startup in China. Right, but we will be already working here for 11 years. And now you're top two in robotics.
Starting point is 00:32:13 Now, humanoid robots, I think it will take many years to go. What do you do inside the robot? What is your software do? We supply cheap solutions. Yeah. And for robots, we are not so much into the software. Yeah, we are supplying chips to the robot companies. When do you think we'll have meaningful volumes of humanoid robots coming?
Starting point is 00:32:47 Five years, if are optimistic. Yeah. I know I'm a little bit conservative compared to many other guys. And I try to be, you know, objective. And also partially as a CEO, as a founder, I'm basically a technology guy. So I think then I'm a little bit more conservative and also objective. What will you personally use them for? I think the number one scenario is home service.
Starting point is 00:33:27 Yeah, you know, I think for, you know, I think for, For each of the family, we enjoy all the fun things, but we don't enjoy many of the tedious work. Yeah, like, you know, cleaning tables after dinner. Yeah, sometimes we like cooking, but we don't like cleaning. I have a theory that divorce rates will go down when you don't have to do boring things anymore. Exactly. Exactly.
Starting point is 00:33:58 You don't have to take up the rubbish or walk the dog. Yeah. There's another thing, which is, you know, China is facing very terrible this Asian society issue. I mean, it's coming so quick quite unexpectedly. Right. It's a, the problem, the issue is getting worse, actually, compared to Europe and even Japan. So I think, you know, what about elderly care? What about the lacking of, of, of, of, uh, of, uh, laborers. So this is going to be a huge social and economical challenge for China. What's the overlap in supply chain between self-driving cars and robotics? I think almost the same.
Starting point is 00:34:49 So if you win the EV race, you'll win the robotics race. Yeah, that's fundamentally what I believe, what I believe. Yeah. My argument is if you are winner for automotive supply chain and you're going to be winner for for robotics. If you look at the actuators, other, you know, mechanical things, all the sensors, like the lasers, you know, radars, I think currently applied to cars. And then because car business is a big volume. And then over competition, other suppliers will continuously improve, you know, the cost structure, the performance, you know, and make it very compact, right? Very compact in the form fact. So it's going to be, make those guys with very strong position for robotics
Starting point is 00:35:54 business. Just like, you know, many of the companies for, for, for, uh, for, uh, for, uh, who were winners for the mobile phone supply chain. And they become extremely competitive for the generic IoT business. Yeah. Stupid question. But where does that leave the race between China and the US in robotics?
Starting point is 00:36:21 Yeah, you know what? I don't like this kind of the view to look at this game. You know, it's, you know, I don't know. This kind of zero-sum game, I'm not sure this is the truth. You know, if China is very strong for manufacture, right?
Starting point is 00:36:47 So if the robotics industry in the U.S., they don't work, if they work with China ecosystem, actually, they could become more innovative. They could innovate in a much faster pace, right? And if they only rely on the kind of supply chain or manufacturer, they will end up with slower technology innovation. So I think it really makes sense, you know, always find the synergy to work together
Starting point is 00:37:24 and to create a value for the global together. So what is the city going to look like in 10 to 20 years time? You know, I'm a huge fan of the ancient Greek culture and history. And, you know, in July, I've been to Athens again. You know, I've been there many times. It was a very golden age, you know, where people really enjoy free thinking, free, you know, exchange of ideas. And there's, you know, so many, you know, inspiring philosophers, you know,
Starting point is 00:38:04 and make huge impact for the human civilization, right. And they are free of labor work. Right. And so I think civilization is so much related to the freedom of human. And then if we have all the robots to do all the tedious and sometimes dangerous work, and then we can have more time like you and me right now, chatting, exchange ideas, sometimes, you know, hanging around for other things. And more time for entertainment, more time for research, more time for arts,
Starting point is 00:38:47 and I think even more time for outing. That would be great. know, if you look at today, the traffic chain in Beijing and Shanghai, right, if you ever come to China, it's terrible, right? It's very often, like a one-way commute from home to office. You're stuck in the traffic for almost like two hours. And then you waste your two hours, you know, of your life, doing nothing because you need 100%, you know, focus, steering the wheel. And then are you the master of the car? in that situation, you are slave of the car. You know, because you don't have choice.
Starting point is 00:39:28 You know, the essence of robotics is give the freedom, give the choice back to the human. And the human can make a choice, you know, to do something or not doing something. What's the town going to look like physically? What's the city going to look like physically? You mean, you know, at that time, even today, China, I think, the housing, like Beijing, housing price,
Starting point is 00:39:56 you know, from the... from school district to school district from like region to region, quite different, right? Maybe in 10 years, and the housing price won't be so much different because, you know, essentially every car is like a moving house. And then you have much more freedom and you don't have such kind of anxiety about distance. And so I think, I don't know, the city will be very different, drastic different. And also traffic, you know, today I think all the people are kind of like competing,
Starting point is 00:40:37 fight for, you know, the lanes and the traffic, the parking lots. And if everything, you know, self-driving, and then all the efficiency of the roads will be much more, much, because all the cars are coordinated rather than competing against each other. And so I think the efficiency of the traffic will be, you know, 10 times more improved. Right. And then the environment will be much nicer, you know, and much less noise and much less stress and much less anxiety. you know, I think the city will be much better. Take me back one second to your Athens visit.
Starting point is 00:41:30 So when you're in Athens, what do you do? What do you do there? Museum. Yeah. And also I visit all the islands. So you go up to Acropolis and you stand there. And what do you think? What do you think?
Starting point is 00:41:46 What do you think when you're there? I was kind of it's stunning, I think. I was so, so amazed. Like, I think culture means everything. Human thinking is, human thinking is unbounded. Yeah. And essentially, we can do something much greater
Starting point is 00:42:16 than today what we can imagine. And yeah, I think it's such an amazing thing. And also in some sense, I think it's a shame today, this world. We are still doing so many terrible things, not making the world a huge mess. I think it's a shame. We are not doing anything greater than the Asian, the Greek people. Personal question, what is your biggest personal family? in life? Personal failure. To be honest, I'm not, I'm not a very personistic guy. You know, I, if I ever
Starting point is 00:43:09 encountered any frustration or failure, and I always turn into the new page and I almost immediately forgot. I think, forgot. Martin better things, probably is a good ability. Yeah. And I think I'm an insane and optimistic guy. And also I care the power of now. You know, I'm also very good, you know, following the philosophy of Zen. So the Chinese, Asian, Buddhism philosophy.
Starting point is 00:43:50 So really carrying the power of now. What's the key to the Zen philosophy for you? You know, the happiness is so simple. You know, according to one of the great monks in the history of Zen, he said actually many people are having a miserable life just because when they are supposed to sleep, they think about work. When they are working, they are thinking about sleeping. And then the essence of happiness,
Starting point is 00:44:23 It's very simple. When you are working, you just focus on working. When you are sleeping, you're just asleep. And then I focus the power of now because I'm running this company, Horizon Robotics, right? I just focus on this and nothing else, nothing more, nothing less. And just doing this whole thing. What's something about you that most people don't know? Oh, there's one thing I'm not very satisfied about myself.
Starting point is 00:44:52 It's about my weight. I'm just having too good appetite. I mean, I love food so much. So this is really something not so good. What do you read? Well, recently I'm reading one book. What's the name of the book? It's telling you about the story about three companies.
Starting point is 00:45:22 Microsoft, Intel, and Apple. It's about all the kind of decisions. decisions, strategies they've been making to create the era of personal computing. It's called a strategic thinking. What's your advice to young people? You know, doing what you love, love what you doing probably are equally important. Many people are always trying to dream to do what they love. But in reality, you are not always so lucky.
Starting point is 00:46:03 Yeah. Sometimes you need to accept. Yeah, sometimes you need to accommodate. Right. But it's nothing pessimistic, you know. And because enjoy whatever you have right now, it's also a very good attitude. Right. Sometimes you love what you are supposed to do or what you are requested to do.
Starting point is 00:46:27 and then maybe this whole thing can become something really love to do and I think we need to have such a kind of attitude you know love what we do and do what we love well you I think that's a wonderful place to end a big thank you what an incredible story what an incredible company you know love your life philosophy there is so much to take away from here so big thank you thank you Nikolai
Starting point is 00:46:57 You know,

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