Hesai to boost R&D and manufacturing scale after $500M listing

16 Sep 2025

Move to raise money on the Hong Kong stock exchange should see investment in production lines and robotics sensors.

Hong Kong listing

Hesai Technology, the China-based firm rated as the market leader in automotive lidar sensors, has raised around $500 million in a new listing of shares on the HKEX exchange in Hong Kong.

The share issue, which provides the company with cash earmarked largely for research and development and investment in production capacity, follows Hesai’s $190 million listing on the Nasdaq in February 2023 - and more recent accusations by the US Department of Defense, denied by the firm, that it has worked with the Chinese military.

The new listing takes advantage of a stock price that has more than doubled in value since the start of this year, and soared by a factor of five over the past 12 months.

Marking the occasion Kai Sun, Hesai's co-founder and chief scientist, said: “Over the past decade, leveraging ASIC technology and automated production systems, Hesai has reduced the cost of lidar from $100,000, once accessible only to research institutions, to just $200, making it possible to equip millions of vehicles with advanced safety and intelligent driving technologies.

"Looking to the decade ahead, the AI-driven Fourth Industrial Revolution is quietly taking shape. This surge in productivity will profoundly enhance human life, and Hesai is committed to delivering core technologies and products that define this new era.”

R&D investment
In a US Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) filing issued prior to the Hong Kong listing, Hesai indicated that it was expecting to realize net proceeds of $513.8 million, thanks in part to a number of “cornerstone” investors that had agreed to purchase an aggregate shareholding priced at $148 million.

The same filing says that the firm will spend half of the proceeds on research and development efforts, including product development work to reduce the size, cost, and weight of its lidar sensors.

“We intend to invest in the design and upgrading of our lidar products for the ADAS [advanced driver assistance systems] market to drive continuous innovation of our next- generation lidars under AT, ET, FT and JT series,” stated Hesai.

“We also plan to enhance our efforts to develop and commercialize lidar products for the robotics markets to cater to the emerging customer needs of various robotics applications, including robotaxi, lawn mowing robots, delivery robots, autonomous mobile robots, and humanoid robots.”

The company added that around 35 per cent of the new funding would be invested in manufacturing capabilities, with the aim of reaching an annual production capacity of 2 million units by the end of this year.

“Additionally, we have more production lines in the planning stage, with potential locations including the Southeast Asia region, which might start building up and mass production in the coming one to two years subject to market demand,” the filing stated.

$40M robotaxi deal
Coincident with the new listing, Hesai announced that it had signed a $40 million agreement to deliver lidar units to an unspecified robotaxi firm based in Silicon Valley.

So far, the Chinese firm has enjoyed by far the most success in its domestic market, where lidar sensors have become far more ubiquitous than elsewhere, and are regularly deployed by the lidar of Li Auto, Changan, and others - although last month Hesai said that its products would feature in next-generation autonomous farming robots for California-based Agtonomy and Austria's Alpha Werke.

Covering deliveries made up until the end of 2026, the latest robotaxi deal will see Hesai provide both long-range and short-range sensor units on an exclusive basis.

Commenting on that deal, Hesai co-founder and CEO David Li said: “This expanded agreement demonstrates the confidence leading robotaxi companies place in Hesai’s technology, combining performance, high reliability, and scalable manufacturing.

“As the industry moves from pilots to scaled deployments, Hesai is proud to deliver lidar solutions that meet the highest standards of quality while enabling safe and reliable driverless mobility at scale.”

Thanks to its success in China, Hesai has repeatedly topped analyst Yole Group’s annual analysis of the automotive lidar sector for the past few years, with the latest estimate suggesting a 61 per cent market share of the global robotaxi segment in 2024, down from 74 per cent in 2023.