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20 Aug 2025
Chinese lidar company reports net profit and Toyota design win, but rival Luminar cuts outlook as Volvo shipments stall.
Hesai Technology, the Shanghai-based but Nasdaq-listed lidar company, has posted another surge in sales revenues and a small net profit for the second quarter of the year.
For the three months ending June 30, the firm reported sales equivalent to $98.6 million (RMB 706 million) with the revenue figure up 54 per cent year-on-year as shipments quadrupled to more than 352,000 units.
That translated to a net income of $6.2 million (RMB 44.1 million), compared with a net loss of $10 million (RMB 72.1 million) in the same period of 2024.
Toyota JV win; European sampling
Hesai’s co-founder and CEO David Li said in a company announcement that the latest quarter marked a “surge in growth momentum” - including new design wins for 20 vehicle models made by nine leading automotive OEMs extending through 2026.
“We achieved a platform win for multiple 2026 models with one of our top two ADAS [advanced driver assistance system] customers, further cementing lidar as a standard feature across this customer’s model lineups,” Li added.
“These ADAS design wins will supercharge our order book, highlighting how lidars have emerged as a standard feature and are fueling mass-market adoption.”
Hesai’s business has typically been based around lidar deployments on vehicles in China, although Li pointed out that the company has reached advanced sampling with a “top European OEM”, with plans for full-scale production and a commercial launch next year.
The firm has also secured a new design with Toyota, for a vehicle that will be manufactured by a joint venture of the Japanese auto giant in China. It will feature Hesai's long-range “ATX” lidar sensor, and is also scheduled to enter mass production in 2026.
The current surge in shipments means that by June 30 Hesai had already shipped more lidar units than in the whole of 2024.
Unusually, the company is yet to provide an outlook for the current quarter, although the Hesai executive team previously said that they expect to post full-year sales of between RMB 3 billion and RMB 3.5 billion in 2025.
Luminar slashes outlook
Two of Hesai’s US-based rivals in the automotive lidar space - Luminar Technologies and Ouster - have also released their financial results for the second quarter of the year in recent days.
Orlando-headquartered Luminar is taking further steps to “streamline” its business, with CEO Paul Ricci - who replaced company founder Austin Russell following his sudden departure in May - reporting a much-reduced net loss of $30.5 million on sales $15.6 million.
That compared with a net loss of $131 million in the same period of 2024, after major reductions in research and development, sales, and administrative budgets.
Luminar provides lidar units for Volvo’s “EX90” electric vehicle, but with production volume estimates for that car down by an estimated 15,000 units this year, the lidar firm has cut its outlook for 2025.
Full-year sales are now expected to be somewhere between $67 million and $74 million, down from $82 million to $90 million, with the company reducing its sensor shipment estimate by 10,000 units.
Ricci also told an investor conference call that Luminar was now operating with greater focus on program goals set by customers including Volvo, Nissan, and Mercedes, and highlighted a “major technical milestone” showing that the firm’s long-wavelength lidar was able to detect objects measuring just 8 centimeters from a distance of more than 175 meters.
“This is a critical requirement on the path to production readiness and, to our knowledge, an industry best,” the CEO added.
Military opportunity
With the hoped-for opportunity in advanced commercial autonomous vehicles yet to materialize, Ricci said that Luminar was also now pursuing applications in military programs where lidar has an advantage thanks to its immunity to GPS jamming.
“Our 1550 nm lidar technology was originally developed for military applications due to its long-range performance in adverse weather and stealth capabilities,” he pointed out.
“Unlike 905 nm lidar, our sensors remain invisible to traditional silicon-based cameras, a crucial capability for covert operations.”
Meanwhile, San Francisco’s Ouster has posted sales revenues of $35 million, up 30 per cent year-on-year, thanks to momentum in robotaxi deployments, warehouse automation, and “yard logistics” as it shipped more than 5500 sensors, a new record.
However, with operational costs also increasing, Ouster’s pre-tax loss of $24.2 million was little changed from the same period last year.
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