Preface:

LiDAR was once hailed by capital markets as a spark waiting to ignite, bridging autonomous driving and the intelligent world.

Today, as mass-produced vehicle models, robots, and embodied intelligence become real demands, domestic leaders are diverging onto different trajectories.

Author | Fang Wensan

Image Source | Internet

Top Three LiDAR Players 'Submit Similar Answers'

Hesai Technology released its Q2 results on August 18, Innovusion unveiled its first half-year report post-IPO on August 20, and RoboSense disclosed interim performance on August 26.

With just a week between these three earnings releases, a fact previously obscured by 'shipment volume competitions' comes to light: China's top three LiDAR companies no longer tell the same story.

Hesai reported H1 net revenue of RMB 1.541 billion (+25.1% YoY) and net profit of RMB 88.9 million (+234.9% YoY), with combined ADAS and robotics LiDAR shipments reaching 1.1 million units.

RoboSense generated H1 revenue of RMB 1.020 billion (+30.2% YoY), selling 719,200 LiDAR units total, including 282,600 robotics units (+510.4% YoY).

Innovusion shipped approximately 450,900 LiDAR units in H1 (+364.8% YoY), surpassing its 2025 full-year total in just six months, with revenue reaching USD 138.7 million and gross margin improving to 11.2%.

All three financial reports appear impressive, but the underlying logic differs completely.

Hesai is using profits from automotive business to incubate a new identity as 'physical AI infrastructure,' RoboSense has substantially shifted its growth engine to robotics, while Innovusion struggles to reduce reliance on a single major client and repair its profit model.

Players at the same table now play three different games.

Automotive Core: Growth Narrative → Cash Cow

To understand why the top three collectively 'pivot,' one must first grasp the automotive LiDAR market's predicament—a surface-level expansion conceals underlying challenges.

Q1 2026 domestic passenger vehicle LiDAR installations exceeded 985,000 units, with leading players dominating market share.

However, the market has highly consolidated: Hesai led with 328,000 installations (34.9% share), followed by Huawei (304,000 units, 32.3%), with Innovusion and RoboSense ranking third and fourth. The top four collectively captured 92% of the market, leaving little room for smaller players as the market enters a stalemate among giants.

Simultaneously, value dilution occurs alongside market consolidation. When RoboSense launched MX in 2024, its initial mass-production pricing fell to around USD 200. Two years later, LiDAR prices continued declining with ATX-class products now penetrating the RMB 80,000–100,000 vehicle segment.

Price enables penetration, but the cost appears in financial reports: Hesai shipped 471,700 units in Q1 2026 (+140.9% YoY) but revenue grew only 29.6%—a gap exceeding 100 percentage points between volume and revenue growth. More units sold at lower per-unit prices widen the divergence between revenue and volume growth.

Automotive business still holds potential for value escalation. L3 vehicle models commonly adopt '1 primary + multiple supplementary' LiDAR configurations, potentially raising per-vehicle value from ~USD 200 to USD 500–1,000.

However, this value realization likely won't occur until late 2026 to 2027—far from immediate relief.

Thus, automotive business has transformed in the top three's strategic portfolios: no longer the protagonist in valuation stories, it now serves as a cash cow.

Hesai reported Q2 revenue of RMB 860 million with GAAP net profit of RMB 70.55 million (+60% YoY), achieving five consecutive quarters of GAAP profitability. In June, it captured 44% of China's primary automotive LiDAR market—double the second-place share—maintaining its 17-month leadership streak.

When a company dominates its core business this thoroughly, the natural question becomes: Where to invest the earnings?

Robotics Second Curve: Speed of Delivery Reveals Stratification

Robotics represents nearly a universal answer among players, with RoboSense leading this curve earliest.

In Q1 2026, its robotics LiDAR sales reached 185,500 units (+1458.8% YoY), accounting for 56% of total shipments—surpassing ADAS business for the first time.

By H1, robotics revenue contributed nearly half of its product revenue and generated the majority of product gross profit.

This growth isn't driven by high-profile humanoid robots but by 'less sexy but lucrative' scenarios: In the lawn-mowing robot market, RoboSense dominates key clients, projecting 450,000–600,000 shipments in 2026. In unmanned delivery, it covers over 90% of top clients, including Neolix, JD.com, and Meituan.

In contrast, humanoid robots will likely see only tens of thousands of units in 2026, even if scaling to 100,000–200,000 units next year—still negligible compared to automotive market's millions in annual shipments. They contribute valuation elasticity, not immediate revenue.

Hesai's pursuit speed surprised many, shipping 260,700 robotics LiDAR units in H1—narrowing the gap with RoboSense to just 20,000 units. In Q2 alone, Hesai's 142,400 units surpassed RoboSense's 97,100 units.

Innovusion's robotics business shipped ~34,600 units in H1 (+842.9% YoY), showing astonishing growth but from a small base.

An overlooked variable lurks here: The window for robotics LiDAR may close far faster than the automotive market. This track features lower technical barriers and more fragmented clients.

Competitors extend beyond the top three: 3D vision leader Orbbec's global robotics vision solutions revenue has more than doubled YoY, serving over 1,000 robotics clients cumulatively.

What took the automotive market five years to transition from 'blue ocean to red ocean' may repeat in robotics within two to three years. First-mover advantages exist but may not last long.

Third Curve Divergence: Some Set Benchmarks, Others Spin Stories

The top three's strategic divergences become even clearer in their visions beyond LiDAR.

Hesai made the most radical move: In April 2026, it upgraded its strategy from 'spatial perception' to 'spatial intelligence,' restructuring its financial reporting into LiDAR and Strategic Growth Initiatives (SGI) segments.

SGI contributed RMB 44.943 million in Q2 revenue for the first time, with its robotic power module production line fully operational, delivering over 10,000 units cumulatively. Its spatial intelligence platform Kosmo completed first prototype deliveries in July, securing orders from leading humanoid robot firms like Galaxy General.

The power module extends Hesai's reach from robots' 'eyes' into 'joints and muscles,' while Kosmo aims to scan the real world into 3D data assets for physical AI training.

Unusually, Hesai made its new business verifiable through KPIs: It raised 2026 SGI revenue guidance to RMB 200–300 million, projecting ~RMB 700 million in 2027 with break-even.

RoboSense's path also points to physical AI, building a product matrix covering 'eyes,' 'skin,' and 'muscles' for embodied robots—spatial cameras, tactile sensors, and joint modules—with commercial deliveries starting in Q3 2026.

The directions align, but granularity differs: RoboSense hasn't provided revenue scale or break-even timelines for its third curve. The market can only track product launches and client partnerships—lacking financial benchmarks to verify strategic execution.

Innovusion faces a more pragmatic reality: This company, which sought Hong Kong listing via De-SPAC in February 2025 with a HKD 11.7 billion valuation, still prioritizes catching up on its second curve.

It simultaneously diversifies clients, reducing NIO's share of total deliveries from 97.3% in 2024 to 86.2% in 2025, and repairs its profit model, turning gross margin positive at 7.9% in 2025 (from -8.7% in 2024) to achieve its first positive annual margin.

While the first two have placed bets on their third curves, Innovusion remains thickening its second curve—objectively lagging behind.

Underestimated Variables Behind Divergence

Shipment volume dominates industry discourse but often misleads. Three metrics matter more than volume in assessing this divergence:

① Gross margin structure: RoboSense's tolerance for a RMB 160 million H1 net loss stems from robotics business offering superior unit prices and margins to automotive, creating a profit buffer against automotive market saturation.

Innovusion faces the opposite: Its 11.2% H1 gross margin lags peers, indicating cost control and manufacturing efficiency weaknesses despite higher product pricing.

② Loss reduction quality: Innovusion's H1 R&D expense ratio stood at just 15.6%, compared to RoboSense's 34.0% and Hesai's 28.3%.

Cutting expenses delivers immediate loss reduction but may carry future costs. Technical shifts toward SPAD-SoC digital chips and fully solid-state architectures are underway, with R&D intensity directly determining access to next-generation products.

③ Cash reserve thickness: As of mid-2026, Hesai held ~RMB 7.05 billion in cash, RoboSense ~RMB 2.06 billion, and Innovusion just ~RMB 760 million.

New businesses typically take years to reach break-even. Cash reserves determine how long a company can nurture new ventures and withstand escalating automotive price wars.

Conclusion:

The top three's business realignments appear to compete for the same 'physical AI' frontier but actually test a more fundamental proposition: Which company's cash cow remains strong enough to fund new ventures until they reach break-even.

Hesai buys time with money, RoboSense exchanges first-mover status for space, and Innovusion trades focus for survival.

The 2026 interim reports merely mark the divergence's beginning. By 2027, when new businesses submit their scores, today's strategic differences will translate into tangible rankings.

Partial references: Gaogong Intelligent Automobile: 'LiDAR Enters Scale Competition Phase as Leaders Seek New Growth Curves'

Gaishi Automobile (Ge Shi Auto): 'LiDAR Market Enters Differentiation Phase; Hesai, RoboSense, Innovusion Paths Emerge'

ZoZhi Auto Research: '2025 Automotive LiDAR Industry Research Report'

Yole Group: 'Automotive LiDAR 2025'

Frost & Sullivan: 'Global and China LiDAR Industry Market Research Report'