Hesai Group Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
August 18, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Strong Q2 results: Revenue rose 22% year over year to RMB 861 million, GAAP net income increased 60% to RMB 71 million, and gross margin remained 40%; this marked the fifth consecutive quarter of GAAP profitability.
  • Positive Sentiment: Core LiDAR shipments increased nearly 80% to more than 628,000 units, including a 60% increase in ADAS shipments and 193% growth in robotics LiDAR. Hesai reiterated its 2026 shipment target of 3.0 million to 3.5 million units and expects second-half seasonality to support the ramp.
  • Positive Sentiment: Strategic growth initiatives are commercializing faster than expected: actuation modules generated Q2 revenue, COSMO is expected to begin revenue contribution in Q3, and 2026 SGI revenue guidance was raised to RMB 200 million–RMB 300 million from RMB 100 million. Management expects SGI to reach approximately US$100 million in 2027 revenue and break even that year.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Management is expanding Hesai beyond LiDAR into a full-stack robotics platform spanning sensing, spatial intelligence and actuation, but SGI remains loss-making, with a RMB 64 million operating loss in Q2, and its longer-term opportunity depends on successful customer validation, production scaling and adoption in emerging robotics markets.
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Earnings Conference Call
Hesai Group Q2 2026
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Hesai Group's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad. Please note that today's conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to our first speaker today, Yuanting Shi, the company's Head of Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Yuanting Shi
Yuanting Shi
Head of Capital Markets at Hesai Group

Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining Hesai Group's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Our earnings release is now available on our IR website at investor.hesaitech.com, as well as via Newswire services. Today, you will hear from our CEO, Dr. David Li, who will provide an overview of our recent updates. Next, our CFO, Mr. Andrew Fan, will address our financial results before we open the call for questions. Before we continue, I refer you to the safe harbor statement in our earnings press release, which applies to this call as we will make forward-looking statements. Please also note that the company will discuss non-GAAP measures today, which are more thoroughly explained and reconciled to the most comparable measures reported under GAAP in our earnings release and SEC filings. With that, I'm pleased to turn over the call to our CEO, Dr. David Li.

Yuanting Shi
Yuanting Shi
Head of Capital Markets at Hesai Group

David, please go ahead.

David Li
David Li
CEO at Hesai Group

Thank you, Yuanting. Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us. Let me start with the headline. The second quarter of 2026 marks a major turning point for Hesai. We are opening a truly exciting new chapter in our history. Over the past decade, we have built the technology, manufacturing engine, and commercial scale required to lead the lidar industry. Today, we are setting our sights on a much larger opportunity, expanding Hesai into a full stack infrastructure platform for robotics and physical AI, empowering them to see, understand, and act. The simplest way to think about Hesai now is three layers. First, see. Our lidar lets intelligent machines see the physical world, what things are, where they are, how fast they are moving, and how the scene changes around them. Second, understand.

David Li
David Li
CEO at Hesai Group

Kosmo turns real environments into reusable AI-ready 3D spatial assets, so intelligent machines learn from the world instead of guessing at it. Third, act. Our robotic actuation modules turn intelligence into precise physical motions. We are already seeing commercial momentum across all these layers. Our core LiDAR business keeps scaling profitably and generating strong cash flow. Kosmo Shift prototypes in July 2026 secured initial orders and remains on track to contribute revenues in the third quarter of 2026. Actuation modules started generating revenues in the second quarter of 2026 and are ramping fast. Together, these three layers form an integrated platform, opening up a significantly larger addressable market than we saw a year ago. Let me start with see. ADAS was our first big commercialization market and is still a phenomenal cash engine. Think about it.

David Li
David Li
CEO at Hesai Group

A modern intelligent car is arguably the most widely deployed robot on Earth, and the industry has moved beyond the question of can the car drive itself. The question now is whether it can do it safely every single time with backup when something fails. That is a completely different bar. Regulation is catching up fast. In China, the first mandatory national safety standards for Level 3 and Level 4 will take effect in 2027. In the U.S., proposed New Jersey legislation would require commercial autonomous vehicles to run two independent sensing technologies beyond cameras, typically LiDAR and radar. So the vehicle still sees when the cameras don't. This is what we have been saying for years. LiDAR is the invisible airbag.

David Li
David Li
CEO at Hesai Group

You never think about your airbag on a normal drive, but the one time you need it is the difference between a bad day and a catastrophe, and nobody removes airbags to save bucks. So the market is shifting from does it have LiDAR to better LiDAR and more LiDAR. Better means longer range, higher resolution, rock-solid reliability where it matters. This quarter, we won a design win with Great Wall Motor for mass production programs using our ultra-long-range high-end ETX LiDAR, with SOP expected in late 2026. ETX extends detection range to more than twice that of ATX. While ATX has already established itself as the benchmark for cost-efficient LiDAR. More means multi-LiDAR, full coverage, and higher redundancy. Momentum on our FTX blind spot LiDAR is strong.

David Li
David Li
CEO at Hesai Group

Changan Automobile and other leading OEMs picked Hesai Group for multi-LiDAR programs, and Li Auto's L8 and L9, each equipped with four Hesai Group LiDARs, are now in mass production. Li Auto’s newly launched L6 model, priced around RMB 250,000, now offers an optional four LiDAR configuration. Four LiDARs at a mainstream price point. That is the moment an advanced feature goes mass market, and that is how content per vehicle compounds. Globally, we are accelerating too. Following Mercedes-Benz, we won a major design win with Volkswagen, covering multiple models from its China joint venture brands, an expanded collaboration with GAC Toyota. We are also riding along with Chinese automakers that are going global, with meaningful overseas volume expected in 2027. Our leadership is also reflected in third-party market data.

David Li
David Li
CEO at Hesai Group

Per Gasgoo, we took 44% of China’s long-range ADAS LiDAR market in June 2026 and have been number one in China for the long-range ADAS LiDAR market for 17 straight months. Now, here is where it gets fun. That same demand for high-performance 3D sensing is expanding rapidly into humanoids and other intelligent machines. Morgan Stanley estimates that robots could deploy roughly 6x as many LiDAR sensors as automotive by 2050. You can only drive one car at a time, but in the future, you might interact with many different robots in a day. We are already leading this trend. We work with more than 50 embodied AI companies worldwide, with recent orders coming from Unitree, Robiant, Galbot, Galaxea, Dexmo, and many others. Our JT128 has become the go-to LiDAR for humanoid and quadruped robots, and the numbers are frankly remarkable.

David Li
David Li
CEO at Hesai Group

Robotics LiDAR shipments in the second quarter almost tripled compared with the same quarter last year. Following year-over-year growth of 47% in 2023, 67% in 2024, and 426% in 2025. We expect another 2x-3x shipment increase in full year 2026. The next leap is going from geometry to meaning. Classic LiDAR gives you the skeleton of the world: distance, shape, and position. A robot needs to know what a thing is, not just where it is. That is Picasso, our full-color, ultra-sensitive 6D SPAD SoC. People love to frame the debate as camera versus LiDAR. That is like asking a human to choose between color and depth. You need both. Picasso fuses them on one chip. We are pleased to share that the Picasso SoC is now SOP-ready.

David Li
David Li
CEO at Hesai Group

Since its launch in April 2026, the full-color ETX, powered by Picasso, has secured initial design wins, including KargoBot. It is now undergoing customer validation and advancing into RFI and RFQ discussions with leading robotaxi operators and global automakers. Because depth and color come off one chip under one timestamp, you get intrinsically time-aligned, multi-modal information, exactly the fuel world models need. We believe Picasso will be the eyes of the next generation of robots. Then layer two, understand. Helping robots understand and learn from their environments. This is where Kosmo comes in. Kosmo is a spatial intelligence platform that integrates an AI spatial camera, AI algorithms, 3D spatial assets, and cloud services into one unified system for capturing, reconstructing, and understanding the physical world. It addresses the sim to real gap bottleneck. Robots need enormous digital representations of the physical world that are geometrically accurate and physically grounded.

David Li
David Li
CEO at Hesai Group

Training on bad inputs is like teaching a kid from a blurry textbook. Plenty of pages, but they may learn the wrong things. Kosmo makes the textbook sharp. It turns real environments into high-fidelity, editable, interactive 3D assets. Reality itself as the training ground. That is exactly the foundation robotic scaling laws need without the model collapse risk from low-quality inputs. Validation came fast. Prototypes went out this July, and within seven days, we had orders from a lineup of leading humanoid robotics companies, including Galbot. Customer feedback has been extremely encouraging. Kosmo reconstructs a 200 sq m restaurant at roughly 5x the efficiency of a leading alternative, with such high fidelity that even 4 mm text on a menu remains clearly visible. Scale that across thousands of scenes, and you get the generalization robots need to walk into an actual home.

David Li
David Li
CEO at Hesai Group

Kosmo also goes well beyond robotics, cultural tourism, film and TV, games, advertising, and beyond. Imagine standing on stage at a concert or on the field for a historic sporting moment. Kosmo turns real places into reusable digital assets. Since the April preview this year, more than 200 prospective partners have come to us, and initial revenues are expected to land in the third quarter within SGI. The part which I am most excited about is the business model of Kosmo. The AI spatial camera is the front door. Behind it sits proprietary algorithms, cloud services, and a compounding library of 3D spatial assets. Every deployment adds assets. A richer library enables more applications. More applications attract more users. More users create more assets. That is a flywheel. Recurring revenues, network effects, and real operating leverage. Kosmo doesn't digitize a space once.

David Li
David Li
CEO at Hesai Group

It compounds the value of that space over time. Layer three is act, the muscles. JPMorgan sees 2026 as a milestone year for humanoids. Actuation modules can be more than half a robot's BOM, and one robot may need more than 100 modules. Run that math, and long-term demand could approach a trillion units. A trillion. It is also brutally hard engineering. You need strength and precision in something compact, efficient, durable, and consistent, like asking a pro athlete to run a marathon every day for years without losing a step. This is exactly our wheelhouse. For more than a decade, we have built precision electromechanical systems, in-house chips, material science, thermal engineering, and automated manufacturing. People think LiDAR is a sensor, but it is not. It is a precision machine where optics, electronics, software, motors, and encoders stay in perfect sync through heat, cold, and vibration for years.

David Li
David Li
CEO at Hesai Group

The physics of a LiDAR scanner and a robot joint are cousins. Both demand precise control of position, speed, and force. Going from helping robots see to helping robots move is the most natural extension we have ever made. We rebuilt the entire actuation stack from first principles: materials, structure, and system integration. The result is a breakthrough in actuation modules. Roughly 3x the torque density and power density of leading products available today in a package 37% smaller with transmission efficiency above 95% and performance validated through 2 million operating cycles. We deliberately started with the hardest system in humanoid robotics, the dexterous hand. Walking gets a robot to the workstation. Hands are what make it useful once it arrives. Starting with this demanding hand application allowed us to validate our architecture at the highest level before extending it across the rest of the body.

David Li
David Li
CEO at Hesai Group

That strategy is already converting into revenues. We are supplying actuation modules to Sharpa, a global frontrunner in AI robotics. In August 2026 in Shanghai at a Dairy Queen store, a Sharpa humanoid is expected to complete what we believe is the world's first zero-retrofit commercial deployment of its kind. The robot is set to autonomously work a full DQ shift preparing signature Blizzard ice cream treats, a complex, long-horizon challenge, while demonstrating the potential to generalize across diverse real-world tasks. That is the whole point. Robotics is not about impressive lab demos. It is about useful work done repeatedly and reliably in a real operating environment. As Sharpa earns market recognition and its backlog grows, our volume grows with it. At the same time, real-world field experience feeds directly back into engineering, creating another powerful flywheel for our product development. Our dedicated production line is fully operational.

David Li
David Li
CEO at Hesai Group

Cumulative shipments exceeded 10,000 modules by the end of the second quarter. We are ramping toward roughly 10,000 modules per month in the near term and expect six-digit volumes in 2027. Meanwhile, full-body modules SOP is expected in the second half of 2026, expanding into shoulder and wrist joints. Beyond robotics, these modules fit anything needing dense, precise, reliable motion. This is only the beginning. As intelligent machines proliferate across industries, we believe the addressable market for high-performance actuation will expand dramatically. Let me close by returning to the bigger transformation we are witnessing today. If digital AI gave machines a voice and a mind, physical AI is giving them eyes to see, a body to move, and the ability to act in the real world.

David Li
David Li
CEO at Hesai Group

Hesai is becoming a full stack infrastructure platform for robotics and physical AI, empowering them to see, understand, and act so as to power the AI-driven fourth industrial revolution. With that, I will turn it over to Andrew for our financials and outlook. Andrew, please go ahead.

Andrew Fan
Andrew Fan
CFO at Hesai Group

Thank you, David. Hello, everyone. The second quarter of 2026 once again demonstrated our ability to deliver solid growth at scale while investing in Hesai's next chapter. As we introduced last quarter, we now manage and report our business through two segments, our core LiDAR business and our strategic growth initiatives, or SGI, giving investors greater visibility into their distinct financial profiles and growth trajectories. With that framework in mind, let me begin with our consolidated financial performance. Total net revenues for the quarter reached RMB 861 million, or $127 million, representing an increase of approximately 22% year-over-year. The second quarter of 2026 marked our ninth consecutive quarter of year-over-year revenue growth. Gross margin remained healthy at 40%. On operating expenses, we remain disciplined while continuing to invest in long-term growth. Sales and marketing expenses were RMB 50 million.

Andrew Fan
Andrew Fan
CFO at Hesai Group

General and administrative expenses were RMB 67 million, and research and development expenses were RMB 231 million. The increase in R&D primarily reflected our targeted investments in the SGI opportunities that David discussed earlier. Even with these continued investments, we maintain solid profitability. GAAP net income reached RMB 71 million, or $10 million, representing an increase of 60% year-over-year, marking our fifth consecutive quarter of GAAP profitability, demonstrating the strength of our operating model and the financial foundation built by our LiDAR business. Non-GAAP net income was RMB 101 million, or $15 million. Now, let me turn to the performance of each segment, beginning with our core LiDAR business. LiDAR revenues reached RMB 816 million, or $120 million. The segment generated operating profits of RMB 66 million, or $10 million, demonstrating strong profitability and cash-generating capacity. Total LiDAR shipments reached over 628,000 units, up close to 80% year-over-year.

Andrew Fan
Andrew Fan
CFO at Hesai Group

ADAS LiDAR shipments increased approximately 60% to over 485,000 units, while robotics LiDAR shipments grew approximately 193% to over 142,000 units. The accelerating growth in robotics, alongside the continued expansion of ADAS, further demonstrates the breadth and resilience of our LiDAR business. Turning to SGI, the second quarter marked the segment's first revenue contribution, an important step from technology development to commercialization. SGI revenues reached RMB 45 million, or $7 million, driven by strong early demand for our robotic actuation modules. The segment recorded an operating loss of RMB 64 million, as we continue to invest in product development, commercialization, and production capacity to support the future growth of both our robotic actuation modules and Kosmo. I am especially pleased to share that SGI commercial momentum has significantly exceeded our expectations.

Andrew Fan
Andrew Fan
CFO at Hesai Group

Our robotic actuation modules are already generating revenues, while Kosmo remains on track to begin contributing revenues in the third quarter of 2026. Given this strong momentum, we are raising our full year 2026 SGI revenue guidance from RMB 100 million to a range of RMB 200 million-RMB 300 million. We are particularly encouraged by SGI's growth trajectory and expect the business to reach approximately $100 million in 2027 in revenues and achieve break even in the same year. This gives us increasing confidence in Hesai's dual-engine growth model. Our LiDAR business continues to deliver scale, profitability, and cash generation, while SGI is rapidly emerging as a powerful new growth engine. Together, they position Hesai to capture the enormous opportunities ahead in robotics and physical AI. With that, this concludes our prepared remarks today. Operator, we are now ready to take questions.

Operator

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star then one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star then two. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. For the benefit of all participants on today's call, if you wish to ask your question to management in Chinese, please immediately repeat your question in English. For the sake of clarity and order, please ask one question at a time. Management will respond, and then feel free to follow up with your next question. Our first question comes from Tina Hou with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Tina Hou
Tina Hou
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Hi, management. Thanks for taking my question. My question is really regarding the actuation module. Obviously, you have raised your revenue guidance for the strategic growth initiatives, and also, I think starting from June, our second quarter, we've seen more news regarding DARPA's collaboration with not only NVIDIA but also Google Gemini robot. Just wondering if you could share more details regarding these and other future potential collaborations. At the same time, what would be the long-term revenue potential for this business? Also, how do we achieve these strategic synergies for the partnership between Sharpa and Hesai? Thank you.

David Li
David Li
CEO at Hesai Group

Thanks for the question. This is David. I will take this question. Hesai is building a full stack infrastructure platform for robotics and physical AI, empowering them to see, understand, and act. These are capabilities that take years of R&D, engineering, and real-world validation to build. Since day one, Hesai's vision has always remained the same: empower robotics, elevate life. LiDAR happened to be the first commercial product through which we demonstrated that we could build a leading technology platform and scale it globally. That is not the end of our journey, it is just the beginning. I myself am also a co-founder of Sharpa, a humanoid robotics company that has gained meaningful recognition globally, including recent adoptions by Gemini Robotics and NVIDIA. Very soon, Sharpa is expected to begin its first real-world commercial deployment at a Dairy Queen store in Shanghai.

David Li
David Li
CEO at Hesai Group

We believe this will be the first deployment of its kind, not a lab program demonstration, not a pop-up showcase, but a regular operating store with the robot performing tasks autonomously in a real commercial environment. That means this is an important milestone, because it demonstrates what humanoids can potentially achieve when they move beyond demonstrations and into a real operating environment. For Hesai, Sharpa can serve as a valuable real-world proving ground. We already supply LiDAR to a diverse pool of robotics companies and expect to ship more than 500K units this year. Through Sharpa, we can also gain firsthand insight into what actuation systems actually need to deliver in real-world environments. That creates a powerful feedback loop. Hesai puts its technologies onto robots.

David Li
David Li
CEO at Hesai Group

The robots in turn tell us what the market really needs from performance metrics and form factors to reliability requirements, edge cases, duty cycles, and total cost of ownership. You cannot fully capture those insights in a slide deck. You get this from robots operating in the real world day after day, and even more importantly, from a company founded by the same founding team with deep firsthand understanding of both the technology and the end application. Let me give you a few concrete examples of this flywheel. For a humanoid, LiDAR is typically more about resolution, field of view, compactness, and robustness than simply maximizing detection range. You know what I mean? For actuation, the requirements go well beyond paper specifications. Reliability, thermal performance, consistency, durability, and performance under real loads all matter.

David Li
David Li
CEO at Hesai Group

These are the kinds of requirements that become much clearer when you are building and operating the robot yourself. That is the difference, between being a component supplier and being a supplier with firsthand knowledge of how the end product actually works in the real world. Our supply of products and provision of manufacturing services to Sharpa act as a high signal test bed and learning platform before bringing our products to the broader market. As disclosed in the announcement and circular for the continuing connected transactions with Sharpa, we are seeking to increase the annual cap under the supply of products framework agreement with Sharpa from RMB 100 million to RMB 300 million, subject to shareholders' approval at the EGM, with the majority of this year's transactions expected to be in actuation modules. Longer term, the opportunity is much broader than Sharpa.

David Li
David Li
CEO at Hesai Group

Our products are all designed to serve third-party customers at scale. If physical AI is entering a period of rapid adoption, Hesai Group's role is to provide the foundational infrastructure, effectively selling the shovels in the physical AI gold rush. Sharpa gives us a way to sharpen those tools faster, validate them in the real world, and understand what the market will need next. That is the strategic value of the flywheel. Sharpa is the proving ground, while the broader physical AI market is the opportunity. That is my answer to your question. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Tim Hsiao with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Tim Hsiao
Tim Hsiao
Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Hi, this is Tim from Morgan Stanley. Thanks for taking my questions and congratulations on this exciting new chapter, as management just mentioned. Just a quick question about the actuation modules. Could you please give us more colors on Hesai humanoid robot actuation modules and how they fit into your broader robotic strategy? What kind of financial profiles do you expect these products to have over time? Are you currently shipping those products to customers beyond Sharpa? Those are my questions. Thank you.

David Li
David Li
CEO at Hesai Group

Thank you. This is David. Okay. Three questions really. Do we want to do it? Is the market ready to do it? Can we do it well? Want it? Easy, yes. Actuation can be more than half a robot's BOM. One humanoid may need over 100 modules. Run that math and long-term demand approaches a trillion units. A trillion. The margin profile is currently around 40%. That is the market we want, right? The second question. Ready? Yes. Humanoids are hitting volume and real-world deployment starting this year. Every robotics company is hunting for great joints, but they are hard to find. A lot of suppliers do not have firsthand knowledge of what leading robot makers need or why those metrics matter. Joints are both critical and hard. Power, precision, size, and durability all at once, like asking a pro athlete to run a marathon every day. The third question.

David Li
David Li
CEO at Hesai Group

Can we?

Operator

The next question comes from Jeff Chung with Citi. Please go ahead.

Jeff Chung
Jeff Chung
Analyst at Citi

Hi. Thank you, operator. Hi, David, Andrew, and Yuanting. I congratulate with the excellent result. My question is about the SGI. What drove the increase in SGI revenue guidance previously set? How should we think about the revenue mix between robotic actuation modules and the Kosmo in SGI? Thank you very much.

David Li
David Li
CEO at Hesai Group

Okay. I know a lot of our investors care about this. We actually raised the full year 2026 SGI revenue guidance from RMB 100 million to a range of RMB 200 million-RMB 300 million. For 2027, we are now looking at roughly $100 million, about RMB 700 million. Most excitingly, SGI is expected to reach break even in 2027. This is because commercial demand and the speed of tech validation came in well ahead of what we originally modeled. That is also a strong signal. Hesai is evolving into an infrastructure platform for robotics and physical AI, not just a lidar company. The main SGI driver this year is robotic automation actuation, built on more than a decade of engineering experiences. These products matured fast and started generating revenue in Q2. Demand from Sharpa has been a major source of our revenue for robotic actuation.

David Li
David Li
CEO at Hesai Group

Sharpa produced one of the first humanoids, maybe the first, actually deploying into real restaurants with a path to scale. That demand for our actuation products ran ahead of expectations, which is why we raised the annual cap for the continuing connected transactions under the supply of products framework agreement with Sharpa from RMB 100 million-RMB 300 million. A quick clarification. That RMB 300 million is the maximum amount for the transactions with Sharpa under the supply of products framework agreement, subject to shareholders' approval at the forthcoming EGM. Kosmo, our spatial intelligence platform, is the other SGI pillar, and it's moving fast too. Prototypes shipped in July. Initial orders came within seven days. It's well on track to start contributing revenue in Q3. We are not breaking out any exact revenue split between these two at this early stage.

David Li
David Li
CEO at Hesai Group

Directionally, actuation is expected to be the majority of SGI revenue in 2026. Kosmo's initial contribution this year will be smaller, low eight digits revenue, because commercialization starts later this year, and the higher value cloud services compound with deployment scale over time. That revenue mix between the two pillars should look different in 2027. As Kosmo matures from the AI spatial camera into cloud processing, subscription, and licensing of high-quality 3D spatial assets, its contribution should raise meaningfully. More importantly, a growing share of Kosmo's revenue is expected to be recurring cloud services under the business model we described earlier, at structurally higher margins as expected. The raised SGI guidance is really about actuation commercialization faster than expected this year and the next.

David Li
David Li
CEO at Hesai Group

With Kosmo set up to become another meaningful contributor as the platform scales.

Yuanting Shi
Yuanting Shi
Head of Capital Markets at Hesai Group

Hello, operator. Are you on the line?

Operator

The next question comes from Nora Min with UBS. Please go ahead.

Nora Min
Nora Min
Analyst at UBS

Hi, this is Nora from UBS. Thank you for taking my question. I have a quick question on Kosmo. Can you brief us the business model of Kosmo, its existing and potential customers, and lastly, the delivery schedule of Kosmo? Thank you.

David Li
David Li
CEO at Hesai Group

Thank you. This is David. I apologize. There's some errors about muting different lines on the operator side. Can you hear me okay?

Nora Min
Nora Min
Analyst at UBS

Yes, I can, David.

David Li
David Li
CEO at Hesai Group

Good. Thank you. Well, I guess this is a part how we still need to work on the AI or the training data to make sure it's not a part of the reinforcement learning experiment. Kosmo is actually a super exciting product. We previewed the Kosmo in April, and more than 200 prospective partners have reached out, robotics, film, gaming, tourism, luxuries, and more. It keeps extending. The press is a signal that this isn't a niche gadget for one vertical. Think about it what 2D camera became over decades, the infrastructure of how the world gets captured and consumed. Kosmo is that, except this time it's 3D and AI driven. Anywhere a regular camera works today, there is a much bigger opportunity digitizing the physical world in 3D.

David Li
David Li
CEO at Hesai Group

I prefer not to put out a specific tab or order value for a customer right now at this early stage because we simply don't know how big this could be. A lot of customers are still in prototype testing and pilots. What matters to me is who is buying into this, who is testing hard, and who is already ordering, and how fast that moved. We started shipping prototypes in July. Within seven days of the first deliveries, we got strong feedback and locked in initial orders, and that is a real pace. Early demand is clustering in two key areas as we see. The first one is the part we're super familiar, the robotics. It's a sharper near-term pull because humanoids are hitting early mass production this year, and they are hungry for high-quality training inputs to unlock scaling. The ceiling to date still seems real.

David Li
David Li
CEO at Hesai Group

A robot can look flawless in simulation and fall apart the second it walks into a real factory or home. Train on weak spatial data that you're getting from a blurry textbook, reading it 100x doesn't raise the ceiling. Kosmo turns real environments into high-fidelity, physically grounded 3D assets. Richer training set, better performance, less risk of model collapse from the success-only data. The second one is more interesting. It's actually the media digital content. We're talking about the gaming, film, luxury tourism, AI short-form advertising, et cetera. Content has been stuck in 2D for decades. It needs a dimensional upgrade. These applications share the same goal, to make the physical world immersive and reusable. A store, a set, a concert, a historical site stops being a one-off shoot and becomes a 3D spatial asset that's reusable. You're not photography in the world.

David Li
David Li
CEO at Hesai Group

You're turning it into a new class of content. Film production is the clearest example. Traditional pipelines lean on green screens and clear practical shoots. Expensive, inconsistent, and slow. Kosmo changes that equation. Higher quality, higher consistency, and lower cost. I can't name who we are in close talk with yet, but they are household names globally. Kosmo is a spatial intelligence platform, AI spatial camera, algorithms, 3D asset, and cloud services, one system. The device is just the front door. The real value compounds behind it. More devices mean more inputs. That deepens the asset library, unlocks more applications, pulls in more customers, and drives recurring revenue through cloud usage and asset licensing. That's where the operating leverage shows up. Early commercial traction is real. Orders and prototypes are just the first turn of the wheel. Recent feedback has already validated both our technology and the business blueprint.

David Li
David Li
CEO at Hesai Group

We are very excited about the next batch of orders coming through. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Danlin Ren with CICC. Please go ahead.

Danlin Ren
Danlin Ren
Analyst at CICC

Hi, management. This is Danlin from CICC. Thank you for taking my question, and congratulations on the strong results and impressive KPI performance. My question is about your guidance. Could you please update us on your guidance for both the third quarter and full year 2026? Are there any updates to your 3 million-3.5 million unit LiDAR shipment guidance for this year? Thank you.

Andrew Fan
Andrew Fan
CFO at Hesai Group

Thanks for the question. For Q3, we expect that the total revenue of RMB between 1.1 billion-1.15 billion, with LiDAR shipments around 800,000-850,000 units. SGI should be high eight digits of that revenue in Q3. Actuation is ramping fast and is approaching 10,000 modules of monthly production capacity soon. Most excitingly, Q3 is expected to be the quarter where revenue from outside ADAS LiDAR gets close to or even more than half of total revenue. That is another clear step into our role as infrastructure for robotics and physical AI. That acceleration also reinforces our confidence for the full year. We have raised SGI expectations, but LiDAR remains the core. We are reiterating 2026 shipments guidance of 3 million-3.5 million LiDAR units. We shipped about 1.1 million units in the first half, almost double last year. Here is what people sometimes miss.

Andrew Fan
Andrew Fan
CFO at Hesai Group

Our ADAS business follows auto seasonality. Second half is usually much stronger. Last year, roughly two-thirds of our full-year volume came in second half. This second half ramp is normal for our business. On top of that, there are three things driving LiDAR growth. First, penetration. LiDAR is not just a story for the new EV players anymore. Traditional OEMs like Geely and Changan, they are putting more LiDAR into their EV architectures too. LiDAR penetration on EVs was close to 20% in 2025. We think it could get to roughly 30%-40% this year. We have been number one in China's long-range ADAS LiDAR markets for 17 months straight, according to Gasgoo. So bigger markets, strong position, we like that setup. Second, do not think of penetration as capped at 100%. It can go well beyond 100%, because it is no longer one LiDAR per car.

Andrew Fan
Andrew Fan
CFO at Hesai Group

China's mandatory L3 and L4 safety standards came out in August, and it should take effect in July 2027. Automakers cannot wait until then and start drilling holes in the car to add LiDAR. These sensors have to be designed in and integrated at the factory. That is why we are already seeing multiple LiDAR setups for broader coverage and also more safety redundancy. Remember how we have always described LiDAR like airbags. You do not just want one airbag in car, and we have already secured the multi-LiDAR design wins with Li Auto, Xiaomi, and Changan with three to six LiDARs per car. I do not think this stops at L3. Over time, we are also seeing advanced L2 picking up blind-spotting LiDARs. So multi-LiDAR, this is becoming a major trend in 2026. Once people experience a safer, more capable driving system, it is very hard to go backwards. Third, robotics.

Andrew Fan
Andrew Fan
CFO at Hesai Group

Humanoids, lawnmowers, robovans, robotaxis, demand is picking up across the board. Embodied AI is especially interesting. We are already working with more than 50 leading companies in this space, including Unitree. Morgan Stanley estimate that the robot LiDAR TAM could be 6x the size of cars. Personally, I think it can be even larger because any robot moving through the real world needs to know where it is, what is around it, and what is changing around it, especially when it is interacting with people all the time. LiDAR is becoming a basic sense organ for robots, the way eyes are for humans. So put it together, the core LiDAR business can keep compounding, and frankly, remaining our cash cow. While SGI is the new growth driver, that is already taking off. Okay, hope this answers your question.

Operator

Our next question comes from Jia Lou with BOCI. Please go ahead.

Jia Lou
Analyst at BOCI

Hello, management. This is Lou Jia from BOCI. My question is regarding robotics LiDAR. Any upside or downside risks to our robotics LiDAR shipment guidance for 2026? In terms of downstream market, beyond the lawnmowers, robovan, and two-wheelers, where is the penetration accelerating? Does the FCC's recent action on foreign-produced robotics devices affect our robotics business? Thank you.

Andrew Fan
Andrew Fan
CFO at Hesai Group

We are still expecting the full year outlook for our robotics LiDAR over 500,000 units. Last year, it was around 240,000. We are on track for the delivery. Q2 robotics LiDAR shipments almost tripled year-over-year. Demand is broad, not concentrated in one niche. On the FCC piece, we do not see a material direct impact at this point. Most of our robotics LiDAR volume this year is robotic lawnmowers. Those customers are largely Chinese manufacturers focused on Europe as their key overseas markets. U.S. lawnmower penetration is still relatively low. We are watching the rules closely and will stay fully compliant. As of today, it does not change our shipment outlook. More importantly, lawnmowers are just one wedge of a much bigger opportunity. The core view is simple. Any robot moving through the physical world has to do what humans do: see, understand, and act in real time.

Andrew Fan
Andrew Fan
CFO at Hesai Group

LiDAR is becoming a fundamental sense organ for robots. A robot without reliable 3D perception is like walking through an unfamiliar room with your eyes closed. We already hold leading positions across humanoids and quadrupeds, robo-taxi, robo-vans, and robotic lawnmowers per GGII, Yole, and Frost & Sullivan. Humanoid demand is especially strong. We are working with more than 50 embodied AI companies worldwide, including Unitree. JT128 is quickly becoming a go-to LiDAR for humanoids and quadrupeds. Navigation, obstacle avoidance, safe interactions with people and objects. Warehouses and logistics are moving fast, too. In some high-performance setups, a single machine can carry as many as 15 JT128 units for full coverage. JT128 also carries a higher ASP than the JT16 used in lawnmowers, harder performance requirements, more LiDAR content per machine. So robotic LiDAR is not just an add-on to auto.

Andrew Fan
Andrew Fan
CFO at Hesai Group

Over time, it can get substantially larger, more environments, potentially far more machines. We like to say LiDAR is the shovel in the physical AI gold rush. We do not need to call which categories scales first. Humanoids, warehouse robots, robo-taxi, lawnmowers, or something else. Whichever wins, reliable spatial perception is essential. Hesai is set up to ride that growth across the whole ecosystem.

Yuanting Shi
Yuanting Shi
Head of Capital Markets at Hesai Group

Operator, we can take the next question.

Operator

Your next question comes from Jessie Lo with Bank of America Securities. Please go ahead.

Jessie Lo
Analyst at Bank of America Securities

Hi, David. Andrew, Yuanting, this is Jessie from Bank of America. Thank you for taking my question. I just have a quick one around our key customer, Xiaomi. Xiaomi has included RoboSense to its LiDAR supplier on the latest Model 1. How do you see Hesai's share developing in Xiaomi's future models? More broadly, as more suppliers enter into our customer supply chain, how do you expect the competition, pricing pressure, and also the supplier shares to evolve?

Andrew Fan
Andrew Fan
CFO at Hesai Group

First, Xiaomi moving further into multi-LiDAR is actually encouraging for the whole industry. Even on L2, they are adding a rear LiDAR where there used to be zero. That tells you something. Automakers and consumers are recognizing what LiDAR is worth. Our long-term view hasn't changed. Every intelligent vehicle eventually carries at least one LiDAR. Many will carry several for coverage and redundancy. It isn't a fight over one LiDAR per car. As LiDARs per vehicle rise, the opportunity can become several times larger. The pie itself is turning out to be much, much bigger than people thought. On competition, multi-sourcing is normal in auto industry, especially as programs scale. We don't comment on allocation for individual future models. That may shift sometimes with performance, cost, capacity, and platform needs. Better to let the data speak.

Andrew Fan
Andrew Fan
CFO at Hesai Group

According to Gasgoo, Hesai has been number one in China's long-range ADAS LiDAR market for 17 straight months, with roughly 40%-50% share. We have done that while keeping relatively healthy pricing and margins. As the leader, our goal is not 100% share at any cost. A destructive price war is the worst outcome for everyone. It starves technology, quality, and safety. We would rather stay clearly ahead on tech, deliver more value to customers, and earn a fair return on that value. That confidence comes from structural advantages. Proprietary ASICs, deep system engineering, large-scale automated manufacturing, a broad product portfolio, automotive-grade reliability, and years of mass production. Those let us stay competitive even when we are not the cheapest option. Customers are not buying a cute little box on the roof.

Andrew Fan
Andrew Fan
CFO at Hesai Group

They are buying safety and reliability for the moment that camera fails. In your cars, LiDAR is the airbag, as we have always said. We are also investing in the next cycle, Picasso, our full-color, ultra-sensitive 6D SPAD SoC. It integrates depth and RGB color at the chip level. To the best of our knowledge, Hesai is currently the only company in China taking native chip-level full-color LiDAR into mass production. On track for the second half of 2026, that is the kind of innovation that let us compete on more than price. Over time, the LiDAR versus camera debate fades. They become one integrated system. The only question that remains is when the car drives itself, is my family safe enough? People also obsess over shipments or revenue share but miss profit share. Just look at Apple in smartphones.

Andrew Fan
Andrew Fan
CFO at Hesai Group

Its share of industry profits has been far higher than its share of unit shipments. That was not a price war, it was technology, product, brand, and a differentiated value. We think about Hesai the same way. We will keep working to hold our leading position, like 40, 50-ish, but leadership is not just shipping the most units. It is capturing a leading share of the industry economic value, protecting healthy growth margins, reinvesting in innovation, and creating long-term values for users and for society.

Operator

Our next question comes from Aaron Wang with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Aaron Wang
Aaron Wang
Analyst at Jefferies

Hi, David, Andrew, and Yuanting. This is Aaron from Jefferies. Thanks for taking my question. My question is on the LiDAR ASP and the margin side. Given the ongoing industry-wide pricing pressure and also the competition from peers, could management elaborate more on the ASP trend for LiDAR products over the next few quarters? How should we think about our margin profile going forward? Thanks.

Andrew Fan
Andrew Fan
CFO at Hesai Group

We are positive on the resilience of gross margin. Full year 2026 outlook is unchanged, close to 40%, and we expect it to keep a healthy margin profile going forward. First, look past the headline blended ASP. The L3 shift changes the maths from one LiDAR's price to total LiDAR content per vehicle. An L2 car typically carried one large long-range LiDAR. Now, we are already seeing L2 at a real blind spot units, two LiDARs. Entry-level L3 might be one ATX plus two FTX blind-spotting LiDARs. More advanced setups with ETX and extra FTX can push total content to roughly $500-$1,000 per vehicle. The LiDAR value we deliver per car is rising, and that's showing up in vehicles launching this year. Gross margin isn't just about price, it's price minus costs.

Andrew Fan
Andrew Fan
CFO at Hesai Group

Our price, we're already number one in the market share, so we have no interest in giving up pricing just to chase more share. We compete on brand, technology, and quality. On cost, years of in-house ASICs, system-level integration, automation, and scale have let us keep bringing costs down. Net of that, we target a relatively stable ADAS margin profile. The mix helps the group too. Robotics LiDAR and overseas business generally run higher margins than domestic ADAS. Robotics LiDARs almost tripled year-over-year in Q2, and the global business should keep expanding. As those scale, they remain important supports for healthy group margins. SGI also started contributing revenue in Q2. Too early to comment on near-term financials while products are still ramping. But long term, we expect SGI margins about 40%.

Andrew Fan
Andrew Fan
CFO at Hesai Group

Kosmo especially, with cloud services in the mix, should carry a structural higher margin than pure hardware and become increasingly accretive to the group.

Operator

There are no further phone questions at this time. I will now hand the call back over to Yuanting Shi for closing remarks.

Yuanting Shi
Yuanting Shi
Head of Capital Markets at Hesai Group

Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have further questions, please feel free to contact our IR team. This concludes today's call, and we look forward to speaking to you again next quarter. Thank you and goodbye.

Operator

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Executives
    • Yuanting Shi
      Yuanting Shi
      Head of Capital Markets
    • David Li
      David Li
      CEO
    • Andrew Fan
      Andrew Fan
      CFO
Analysts
    • Tina Hou
      Analyst at Goldman Sachs
    • Tim Hsiao
      Analyst at Morgan Stanley
    • Jeff Chung
      Analyst at Citi
    • Nora Min
      Analyst at UBS
    • Danlin Ren
      Analyst at CICC
    • Jia Lou
      Analyst at BOCI
    • Jessie Lo
      Analyst at Bank of America Securities
    • Aaron Wang
      Analyst at Jefferies
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