Global lidar market capitalization champion Hesai (02525, HSAI.US) returns to Hong Kong, and vehicle-mounted and robotic two-wheel drives unleash long-term growth momentum

If we were to talk about the hottest direction in the global capital market this year, the technology sector is probably not that bad. Take the tech-rich Nasdaq Index. Driven by the artificial intelligence boom and expectations of interest rate cuts from the Federal Reserve, the NASDAQ index frequently hit record highs during the year.

In the context of an era where technology stocks are highly regarded, Zhitong Finance has noticed that the Hong Kong stock market will also welcome another technology company with hard core strength. On September 16, HSAI.US (02525, HSAI.US), the first stock listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, was officially listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

As a leading global lidar company, Hesai's leading position and scarcity has been highly recognized by top international institutions and investors at home and abroad. The company's subscription was very popular. The public sale portion was oversubscribed 170 times, involving HK$66.9 billion; the margin accumulated about HK$46.8 billion, based on the public sale portion raised HK$388 million, and margin oversubscribed nearly 120 times. At the same time, Hesai also brought in 6 cornerstone investors, including Gao Wei, WT Asset Management, and Taikang Life Insurance, to fully pool international long-term capital and industrial capital. On the first day of listing, the shares were reported intraday at HK$244.0 per share, with a market capitalization of over HK$36 billion.

The underlying logic behind Hesai's return to Hong Kong is that the company has solid fundamentals and strong growth expectations. Judging from the company's past financial reports, Hesai is not only in a leading position in the industry in terms of scale, but is also the first to achieve profit; what is even more rare is that in addition to automotive lidar, Hesai's advanced layout in the field of robotic lidar has also begun to enter an intensive harvest period. The company's second growth curve has already revealed its potential, and it is expected that it will continue to contribute considerable performance increases in the future.

A new journey for the global leader in lidar

Hesai was founded in 2014, and in February 2023, the company entered the US stock market with the “China's first lidar stock” aura. After a lapse of more than two years, Hesai, which went public in Hong Kong, can be said to be even more “omnipotent.”

First, in terms of financial performance, Hesai achieved revenue of 710 million yuan in the second quarter of this year, an increase of 53.9% over the previous year. This is the fifth consecutive quarter in which the company achieved positive year-on-year revenue growth. At the same time as the scale continued to rise, Hesai's profit performance greatly exceeded expectations. The company's net profit reached 44.1 million yuan in the second quarter, which is a significant optimization compared to -72.1 million yuan in the same period last year.

If the timeline is lengthened, there are signs that Hesai will achieve excellent results for a long time. By 2024, Hesai had already achieved revenue of 2.08 billion yuan, making it the world's first and only listed lidar company to achieve a profit for the whole year. Also in this year, Hesai's operating cash flow and net cash flow reached 63 million yuan and 1.3 billion yuan respectively. The potential for self-“ hematopoiesis” can already be seen.

Behind the beautiful financial data, there is actually a rapid increase in Hesai's market influence in the lidar field. In the second quarter of 2025, the total delivery volume of Hesai lidars surged 306.9% year on year to 352,100 units, of which ADAS lidar delivery volume was 303,600 units, an increase of 275.8% year on year; the number of lidars delivered in the robotics field was 48,500 units, an increase of 743.6%. In the first half of the year, the total delivery volume of Hesai lidars was 547,900 units. This figure has surpassed the full scale of 2024.

From a global perspective, according to the “2025 Global Automotive LiDAR Market Report”, Hesai's market share in the global automotive lidar market in 2024 was about 33%, ranking first in the world. It is worth mentioning that this is the fourth year in a row that Hesai has topped the list.

Hesai's competitive advantage in the L4 autonomous lidar market is even more prominent. Based on revenue generated by related products in 2024, Hesai's global market share is as high as 61%, and in this segment, Hesai has also “topped the list” for four consecutive years.

While amplifying the competitive advantage of the main business, it cannot be overlooked that Hesai has also stepped up its investment in the field of robotic lidar with a forward-looking strategic vision, and has achieved impressive milestones. Based on public information, up to now, the cumulative sales volume of Hesai's robotic lidar ranks first in the world, and the company has more than 2,000 customers in many countries around the world. The reason why Hesai can “lead” the robotic lidar circuit is not unrelated to the company starting a strong product cycle. Take the JT series for mowing robots that only went on sale at the beginning of this year. By the end of June, the total delivery of the JT series had exceeded 100,000 units, making it the fastest lidar product in the global robotics field to reach this critical milestone.

With the smooth return to Hong Kong's listing, this fund-raising has injected new capital impetus into the company. In addition, as an important international financial center, Hong Kong also has a scarce bridge advantage connecting mainland and overseas markets. It can be expected that Hesai's growth prospects, which are gaining momentum, will be more optimistic in the future.

Bringing together multiple growth logics, the development prospects are broad

Standing at the new starting point of the current listing of Hong Kong stocks and US stocks, it is expected that Hesai's global advance will continue to advance further. Up to now, out of the 10 international automobile manufacturers with the highest global revenue in the “Fortune” World 500 list, 7 automobile manufacturers or their joint venture partners have reached targeted mass-production partnerships with Hesai. In addition, eight of the top ten Robotaxi companies in the world have also chosen Hesai as their lidar supplier.

Based on the inference of industry trends, Hesai's global influence will further expand. First of all, in the case of in-vehicle racing, thanks to the growing demand for smart driving equality on the demand side, the increase in users' demand for intelligent driving has driven the smart driving penetration rate to continue to grow; at the same time, on the supply side, lidar is becoming an increasingly cost-effective choice for smart driving sensors due to falling prices. Driven by both supply and demand, automotive lidar will maintain a rapid growth trend. According to estimates by analysts at Guosheng Securities, the global automotive lidar market is expected to rise to 50 billion yuan by 2030.

Among them, Hesai, an industry leader, continues to iterate and innovate in terms of performance breakthroughs and cost reduction, and the company now has a high-performance lidar product matrix. For example, ETX is an automotive-grade ultra-long-range lidar with the highest line count and longest distance measurement in the world. This series is specially designed for L3 and L4 autonomous driving; the FTX product launched by Hesai is a pure solid-state vehicle-grade blind-repair lidar with the widest field of view in the world. Furthermore, in the field of L2 assisted driving, Hesai's ATX products have become the “king of standard features” for popular models due to their high performance, small size, and excellent all-weather performance. With its first-mover advantage, technical advantage, and perfect product matrix, Hesai is expected to continue to maintain a “leading” trend in the fast-emitting automotive lidar industry.

Hesai's growth prospects in the field of robotic lidar, which is full of room for imagination, should not be underestimated. Currently, shipments of industrial scenarios, consumer service scenarios, humanoid robots, etc. have increased dramatically. For consumer robots, industrial robots, and even iterative humanoid robots, vision systems are the core part of perception. According to estimates by analysts at Guosheng Securities, the robotic lidar market is expected to soar to the level of 10 billion yuan by 2030.

Facing the upcoming robot era, Hesai also stepped in as a pioneer. In terms of lawnmower robots, in the next year, Hesai will provide Keting Technology with 300,000 JT series lidars. In terms of four-legged and humanoid robots, last month Hesai reached an in-depth cooperation with Vbot Vitadynamics, the first consumer-grade physical intelligence company in China; in the same month, Hesai also reached a cooperation with the Tsinghua Dexterity Smart Innovation Company. In addition, in terms of mobile and commercial robots, Hesai has also established deep cooperative relationships with many leading companies in the industry. For example, the company's products have been “launched” neolithic unmanned vehicles on a large scale, supporting the deployment of unmanned vehicles in more than 30 cities and 9 overseas countries. In total, nearly 1,000 vehicles have been delivered, and the safe driving of more than 1.3 million kilometers has been achieved.

Conclusions

At this point in time, whether it's the US stock market or the Chinese capital market, the enthusiasm for investing in “hard technology” has reached an almost unsurpassed level. Going back to the roots, this is because the global macroeconomic and industrial landscape is undergoing profound changes. Hard technology is not only seen as the core engine driving future economic growth, but also the key for countries to achieve strategic autonomy in science and technology.

In the context of this era, Hesai, which is far from fully unleashed the growth potential of its traditional dominant business, is also strongly constructing a second growth curve with robotic lidar. No wonder that Hesai, which is now listed in Hong Kong, has received great attention from various sources of funding. Looking forward to the future, it is foreseeable that as Hesai's multiple growth logic is gradually implemented, the company's Hong Kong stock price trend will also be very worth looking forward to.