SAIC and Momenta Jointly Establish Intelligent Driving Company

On the evening of November 5, SAIC Motor announced that its 9th Board of Directors' 14th meeting approved a proposal to jointly establish an intelligent driving joint venture with Momenta and Yandian Technology, with a registered capital of 300 million yuan. The company name is yet to be determined.

Momenta will contribute 153 million yuan for a 51% stake; SAIC Motor will contribute 75 million yuan for 25%; Yandian Technology will contribute 72 million yuan for 24%. The SAIC group's total stake is 49%.

Momenta's announcement that day described the business in specific terms: L2 and L3 advanced intelligent driving products and services covering SAIC's global full-platform vehicle models. SAIC's announcement stated it aims to strengthen advanced intelligent driving R&D capabilities and enhance the competitiveness of complete vehicles in the global market.

According to SAIC Motor's official website, it sold 4.507 million vehicles in 2025; Autohome reported on October 21 that Momenta has cumulatively delivered over 1.3 million units in mass production. What the joint venture is meant to cover is all of the former's vehicle model platforms.

Vehicle model image (Image source / Momenta official website)

From the 408,800-yuan IM L7 to the 129,800-yuan Jiayue 07

Based on public reports, Momenta's earliest work with SAIC was in parking, with an on-site presence at SAIC as early as 2018; in the second half of 2020 it won the intelligent driving nomination for the IM brand; in March 2021 SAIC led Momenta's Series C financing.

The first mass-production vehicle was the IM L7, with a pre-sale price of 408,800 yuan, delivered in the first quarter of 2022, with IM AD jointly developed by both parties. Since then, assisted driving across the entire IM lineup has been provided by Momenta, with the solution gradually applied to Roewe, MG, Rising Auto, SAIC Audi, and SAIC Volkswagen.

The price band has already been pushed down. The Roewe Jiayue 07, launched on October 23, has a 220 LiDAR version with a limited-time benefit price of 129,800 yuan, equipped with the Momenta R7 world model and the Xinxin Hangtu X7 chip. Momenta announced on October 24 that this vehicle surpassed 10,000 firm orders in 1 minute and 53 seconds after launch, and 99.7% of these orders chose the version with assisted driving.

From 408,800 yuan to 129,800 yuan, more than four years have passed. The full-platform vehicle models mentioned in the joint venture announcement already include these family cars in the 100,000-plus yuan range that are already on the road.

Full platform corresponds to more than four million vehicles a year

SAIC Motor's production and sales bulletin shows that in the first three quarters of 2026, vehicle sales were 3.1471 million units, of which 1.3883 million were new energy vehicles, accounting for 44.11%, and 1.1656 million were overseas, accounting for 37.04%. The 2025 annual report proposed striving for vehicle sales of 5 million units in 2026.

Momenta's semi-annual report disclosed that in the first half of the year it added approximately 321,000 installations, with cumulative installations exceeding 1 million, cooperating with 26 OEMs and 105 cumulative mass-production models. By October, the media figure for cumulative deliveries was 1.3 million. The two figures are from different time points, and neither consists entirely of SAIC vehicles.

Based on SAIC's 2025 sales, full-platform rollout corresponds to a scale of more than four million vehicles a year, several times more than Momenta's cumulative deliveries of just over one million units to date. According to China Insights Consultancy, from March 2025 to February 2026, Momenta held 65% of China's third-party urban NOA supplier market.

The trends of SAIC's various brands are not consistent. In the first three quarters, SAIC Passenger Vehicle sold 867,500 units, up 45.56% year on year; IM sold 59,700 units, up 40.1% year on year; SAIC Volkswagen sold 492,600 units, down 34.52% year on year. Which brands the full platform lands on first will affect how quickly installation volume ramps up.

In-cabin riding scenario (Image source / Momenta official website)

What the 75 million yuan buys

Yandian Technology is a company within the SAIC system. It was established in June 2022, with Yanfeng Automotive Trim Systems Co., Ltd. as its sole shareholder, and focuses on cockpit domain controllers. Bringing it into the joint venture allows the adaptation of intelligent driving algorithms and cockpit domain control to be completed within one company.

SAIC is Momenta's largest institutional shareholder, previously disclosed as holding 9.45%, and Momenta in turn holds shares in IM Motors. Of the 300 million yuan registered capital, SAIC's 75 million yuan is the smallest contribution among the three parties.

How Momenta makes money in this business is listed in its semi-annual report: revenue in the first half of 2026 was 1.60 billion yuan, of which licensing service revenue was 607 million yuan, accounting for 37.9%. It charges engineering fees to develop a vehicle, and after the vehicle is sold, each vehicle equipped with its solution continues to generate software licensing revenue.

The joint venture writes L2 and L3 for SAIC's global full-platform vehicle models into its business scope, and what Momenta gets is the licensing revenue from each vehicle thereafter. SAIC uses 75 million yuan and a 25% equity stake to buy the ability for this solution not to have to be renegotiated for every brand and every vehicle model.

Concept vehicle image (Image source / Yanfeng official website)

The parts not yet written into the announcement

The joint venture's name, R&D division of labor, first batch of mass-production models, and mass-production timeline were not listed in either company's announcement.

The progress of models already on the road is also uneven. The pre-sale description for the Jiayue 07 places functions such as "parking space to parking space" and "driving roaming" after subsequent R7 OTA upgrades, and the Roewe model official website currently still has "coming soon"