By Kate Yuan

China’s leading CMOS image sensor (CIS) company SmartSens (思特威) has successfully been listed on Shanghai Stock Exchange’s Star Board in May. With a strong market share in the security market, it is expanding to the high-end automotive electronics and smartphone application markets. Behind this success is Mo Yaowu, CTO of the company. A recent JW Insights report tells his story.

SmartSens was founded in Shanghai in 2017 and Mo Yaowu joined the company as a co-founder. It is the first Chinese company to produce CIS products with its own IP under Mo’s technical leadership. It now owns six automotive-grade high-performance CIS products, and recently released the automotive-grade SC220AT for high-end ADAS applications.

Mo Yaowu has spent more than 20 years in CIS field, having presided over the design of nearly 100 CIS products, with recognition in the global community, being one of the top hands.  

After joining SmartSens, Mo has led SmartSens's R&D team focusing on CIS technological innovation.  

Generally speaking, it takes about 12 to 36 months from chip design to mass production. However, he managed to shorten this long cycle and completed the design of the first CIS chip - SC1235 just in a matter of weeks with his deep experience. The chip was an instant hit in the security field, winning 60% market share. 

Mo started his R&D experience in Japan. In 1997, He joined a research institute in Osaka, where he designed both CMOS standard analog and digital circuits. Through this rare opportunity, he mastered the complete development process of the CIS chips. 

In 2004, he worked at a Japanese printer company and continued his  CIS research, where he gained more craftsmanship and experience in “high efficiency” product development.

His valuable experiences honed in Japan have helped him lead the SmartSens R&D team turning out CIS products as the first in China  Mo explained, “The reason SmartSens can quickly come out with  in-vehicle products is that we have applied our IP-based self-developed key imaging technology.” 

Once the core part was conquered, Mo led his team applying the same high-performance module and design technology to different specifications and applications. 

In 2021, SmartSens taped out as many as 31 chips, being the frontrunner in the industry. It has only been two years since SmartSens launched the first automotive-grade chip SC100AT in 2020.

Xu Chen, the founder, chairman and CEO of SmartSens, spoke highly of his CTO, “After Dr. Mo joined SmartSens, he has constantly led the company's technological breakthroughs. We build our R&D team with the concepts of perfection and high efficiency.”

For five consecutive years in the global CIS security field,  SmartSens has provided the biggest shipments. It is also expanding in automotive electronics, machine vision and smartphones, said the company.