onsemi has grown its automotive business by putting more technology into each vehicle. Now it sees physical AI as an opportunity to extend the same growth model to intelligent machines
The automotive industry is undergoing the most significant technological transformation in its history, driven by electrification, autonomy and software-defined architectures. These same forces are creating opportunities that extend far beyond transportation.
Speaking at its Investor Day, Sudhir Gopalswamy, Group President, Analog & Mixed-Signal and Intelligent Sensing Groups at onsemi, outlined how the intelligent power and sensing technologies that have fueled the company's automotive growth are increasingly becoming foundational building blocks for a new generation of industrial systems and physical AI applications.
“We’re expanding the core of our business. The next phase of growth comes from content expansion, increasing the value of our solutions and leveraging automotive innovation across emerging industrial systems,” said Gopalswamy.
Watch the keynote here: Expanding the Core: Automotive and Industrial Sudhir Gopalswamy, Group President, Analog & Mixed-Signal and Intelligent Sensing Groups
Three Technology Shifts Driving the Next Era of Automotive Growth
Gopalswamy highlighted how onsemi’s automotive business has consistently grown faster than vehicle sales. This is driven by two major trends: electrification and autonomous driving. These two trends, in addition to the rise of software-defined vehicles will drive future growth for the company.
“Cars have become intelligent systems on wheels. This requires power, sensing and connectivity to work cohesively and plays directly to onsemi's strengths,” said Gopalswamy. “By bringing these capabilities together on an optimized technology platform, we are able to deliver more value across the vehicle.”
Technology Shift #1: Electrification
Electrification remains one of the largest growth opportunities in transportation with future electric vehicles requiring even greater performance and efficiency. To support that transition, Gopalswamy outlined how onsemi is building on its silicon carbide (SiC) leadership to capture more of that value through both device innovation and system-level solutions.
The company expects to continue improving SiC performance by approximately 25% with each new generation while extending its roadmap to 1400V SiC to support next-generation 1000V battery architectures. For vehicle manufacturers, that means the flexibility to extend driving range, improve performance, reduce system costs, or optimize across all three.
Beyond the power device itself, onsemi is expanding its value proposition through Treo, its 65nm analog and mixed-signal platform. Treo enables the integration of power, sensing and control functions into intelligent system solutions that improve how power is managed throughout the vehicle.
The company is extending that same system-level approach through its Embedded Power Platform (EPP). Compared with conventional inverter designs, EPP delivers up to 4x higher power density while reducing power losses by 15%, enabling smaller, lighter and more efficient inverter systems.
These platforms enable automakers to maximize range, charging performance and vehicle efficiency while simplifying system design, accelerating time to market, and lowering overall development and manufacturing costs.
Technology Shift #2: Autonomy
The automotive industry is steadily moving toward vehicles capable of making decisions on their own. But autonomy requires vehicles to perceive the world in ways that exceed human capabilities. As vehicles take on greater responsibility for navigation and decision-making, they must be able to identify hazards and maintain safety in challenging real-world conditions such as darkness, fog, rain or glare. That dynamic is driving the need for layered imaging architectures that combine multiple sensing technologies to create a perception stack that improves accuracy, reliability and safety.
onsemi has built a broad sensing portfolio spanning image, ultrasonic and inductive technologies, while expanding into emerging capabilities such as indirect time-of-flight (iToF) and short-wave infrared (SWIR) sensing. Gopalswamy highlighted onsemi’s intelligent sensing roadmap, which is focused on delivering higher levels of perception accuracy through advances in image, ultrasonic and inductive sensing technologies. By increasing sensing performance by up to 20x while reducing system costs through greater integration, onsemi is helping customers build safer, more reliable autonomous systems capable of operating in increasingly complex real-world environments.
“Autonomy starts with perception. Autonomous machines must accurately assess the world around them,” said Gopalswamy. “That’s why we are extending vision with sensing modalities that that can understand the physical world with greater speed, precision and reliability.”
Technology Shift #3: Software-Defined Vehicles
In addition to electrification and autonomy, Gopalswamy identified software-defined vehicles as a major new growth engine.
For decades, vehicles were built around hundreds of separate electronic control units connected through increasingly complex wiring architectures. Automakers are now replacing that approach with centralized computing platforms and Ethernet-based networks that simplify vehicle design and make software updates easier to deploy. The shift is expected to reduce wiring complexity, weight, cost, and enable new features and updates through software.
This transition creates new opportunities for intelligent sensing and actuating nodes. onsemi expects software-defined vehicles to represent a multibillion-dollar opportunity as automakers adopt new networking technologies and redesign vehicle electronics around software-based platforms.
Automotive Innovation Becomes a Platform for Physical AI
The technologies transforming modern vehicles are increasingly finding applications far beyond transportation. As AI expands from digital intelligence into physical intelligence, the same technologies that helped onsemi outgrow the broader automotive market can unlock new opportunities in emerging physical AI applications.
Whether in autonomous vehicles, industrial automation systems, drones, warehouse robots or humanoid robots, intelligent machines must perform three essential functions: perceive their environment, adapt to changing conditions, make decisions and take action. Accomplishing those tasks requires advanced sensing to understand the physical world, efficient power conversion to manage energy, and precise control systems to enable movement and actuation.
“Intelligent systems are only possible if machines can see, navigate and interact with the physical world,” said Gopalswamy. “In many ways, physical AI represents a natural extension of autonomous vehicles. As machines become more autonomous, semiconductor content increases. More sensing is required. More power management and actuation is needed. More connectivity is necessary to move information throughout the system.”
The evolution to physical AI is happening now, bringing together nearly every core technology in onsemi's portfolio across multiple subsystems including vision systems, power conversion, motor control, more. As a result, emerging platforms such as humanoid robots represent a high-content platform opportunity where dozens of power, sensing and control devices must work together seamlessly.
By leveraging the same power and sensing platforms across automotive, industrial and physical AI markets, the company can expand the revenue potential of its core technologies while participating in what it believes may be the next major wave of semiconductor content growth.
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