禾赛的烧钱激光雷达赌局奏效：从纳斯达克IPO到奔驰L3再到首次盈利

做的是什么生意

Hesai makes lidar sensors, the laser-based 3D perception hardware automakers and robot makers need for assisted and autonomous driving, selling devices plus perception software across China, Europe and the US.

启动资金：$190M raised in its February 2023 Nasdaq IPO; its earlier STAR-board application, approved in January 2021 to raise over RMB 200M at a RMB 10B valuation, was withdrawn two months later.

起因

Founded in Shanghai in 2013, according to TechCrunch, by engineers including Li Yifan, Hesai rode the autonomous-driving boom and by 2022 was already the largest lidar maker by shipments, shipping over 80,000 units that year and more than 100,000 cumulatively between 2017 and 2022.

经过

Scale came at a price: net losses of RMB 120M in 2019, RMB 107M in 2020, RMB 245M in 2021 and RMB 165M in the first nine months of 2022, while a Chinese lidar price war cut gross margin from 57.5% in 2020 to 44% by late 2022 and US chip-export controls threatened its supply chain. Hesai still went public, raising an upsized $190M on Nasdaq in February 2023 and closing day one up nearly 11%, at a moment when Western rivals were collapsing — Quanergy had filed for bankruptcy and Ouster had merged with Velodyne. In 2024 shipments more than doubled to 501,889 units, the fourth straight year of doubling, and the company posted its first full-year non-GAAP profit of RMB 14M with Q4 2024 GAAP net income of RMB 147M.

结果

Still scaling: Hesai reported 2025 full-year GAAP net income of RMB 435.9M, its first profitable year, and a 29.6% revenue rise to RMB 680.6M in Q1 2026, its fourth consecutive GAAP-profitable quarter. Management announced a Mercedes-Benz L3 autonomous-driving supply deal for Europe and China, with lidar produced at a new Thailand plant, plus a Toyota joint-venture order in China and a new "spatial intelligence" unit.

可借鉴之处

当传感器成为标配时，哪怕亏本也要铺规模：量和成本曲线带来的优势，让禾赛成了头一个盈利的激光雷达厂商，对手都没了。