On August 18, Hesai Group (NASDAQ:HSAI) held its second quarter earnings call, and the numbers made clear that the lidar maker’s pivot into robotics is no longer a side project. Total net revenues climbed 22% year over year to RMB 861 million, and lidar shipments jumped 78.4% to 628,275 units. But the real headline sat inside that total: robotics lidar shipments nearly tripled, up 193.4% to 142,371 units, while the company’s newer actuation and spatial intelligence businesses booked their first commercial revenue. Hesai is still an automotive lidar supplier at heart, but it is racing to become something bigger.
A Second Growth Engine Ignites
Hesai’s core business remains the automotive market, where it held 44% of China’s long-range ADAS lidar segment in June 2026 and has ranked first for 17 consecutive months. New design wins with Volkswagen, Great Wall Motor and GAC Toyota this quarter add to existing relationships with Mercedes-Benz and Li Auto, whose L6, L8 and L9 models now ship with multiple Hesai units. CFO Peng Fan noted the quarter marked Hesai’s ninth straight period of year-over-year revenue growth and fifth straight quarter of GAAP profitability, with net income up 60% to RMB 71 million. That cash-generating base is what funds the company’s newer bets.
Robotics lidar shipments are growing far faster than the automotive side, and Hesai’s Strategic Growth Initiatives segment, which covers robotic actuation modules and the Kosmo spatial mapping platform, posted its first-ever revenue of RMB 45 million. Management raised full-year SGI guidance from RMB 100 million to a range of RMB 200 million to RMB 300 million, and set a target of $100 million in SGI revenue with breakeven economics in 2027. Actuation module shipments have already topped 10,000 units, with production capacity moving toward 10,000 modules a month.
Cracks Beneath The Surge
The shift toward robotics and new product lines is not free. Gross margin slipped to 40.1% from 42.5% a year earlier, which the company attributed to a bigger revenue contribution from lower-margin products as the mix shifts. Meanwhile, the SGI segment that is supposed to become Hesai’s next growth engine posted an operating loss of RMB 64 million for the quarter, a reminder that commercialization in robotics and spatial computing is still an investment phase rather than a profit center. Operating expenses moved higher across the board, with research and development spending up 16% to RMB 231 million, sales and marketing up 17.2%, and general and administrative costs up 5.1%.
None of that is alarming on its own given the scale of the opportunity Hesai is chasing, but it does mean two of the three layers in the company’s new “see, understand, act” strategy are still losing money while the lidar business carries the load. CFO Peng Fan also flagged a structural risk to the whole industry, warning that “a disruptive price war is the worst outcome for everyone” because it could starve the investment needed for technology, quality and safety standards across the sector.
Wall Street’s Mixed Signals
Hedge fund ownership of Hesai slipped from 22 funds to 21 in the most recent quarter, a modest pullback rather than a rush for the exits. Short interest sits at 7.20% of float, a level that suggests a real but not overwhelming bear camp has built a position against the stock. At the same time, the stock trades at a forward P/E of 30.58 as of August 26, a multiple that assumes meaningful earnings growth ahead rather than a company merely holding its ground.
The Road Still Ahead
Hesai’s quarter shows a company trying to run two businesses at once, a mature, profitable lidar operation and a nascent robotics platform still finding its financial footing. The lidar side’s shipment growth and design win momentum give the story real weight, and the early SGI revenue and raised guidance suggest the newer bets are ahead of where management expected. But the margin compression and the SGI operating loss are the costs of building that second engine, and Peng Fan’s price war warning is a risk that sits over the entire lidar industry, not just Hesai.
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