AEye, Inc. ($LIDR)

Earnings Call Transcript · March 16, 2026

NasdaqCM US Information Technology Electronic Equipment, Instruments and Components Earnings Calls 44 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Operator

Operator
#1

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. My name is Negre, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the AEye Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Keaton Olson, Investor Relations Manager. You may begin.

Keaton Olson

Executives
#2

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining AEye's Fourth Quarter 2020 Earnings Call. I'm Keaton Olson, Investor Relations Manager for AEye. And with me today are Matt Fisch, Chief Executive Officer; and Conor Tierney, Chief Financial Officer. Earlier today, AEye announced its financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2025. A copy of the press release is available in the Investor Relations section of the company's website. Before we begin, today's discussion may include forward-looking statements as defined in the securities laws and regulations of the United States with reference to future events, operating results or performance and are based on our current expectations and assumptions. Any forward-looking statements are subject to inherent risks, uncertainties and changes in circumstances. Our actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements. You can find more information about the risks, uncertainties and other factors in the reports AEye files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including in the most recent periodic report. The statements to be made today are as of today only, and AEye does not intend to update any forward-looking statements regardless of any new information, future developments or otherwise, except as may be required by law. In addition, we will be discussing non-GAAP financial measures on this call, which we believe are relevant in assessing the financial performance of the business. These measures are presented as supplemental information only and should not be considered as substitute for financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. You can find the reconciliations of these metrics to the most directly comparable GAAP measures within the press release. Now let me pass the call over to Matt.

Matthew Fisch

Executives
#3

Thank you, Keaton, and thank you all for joining our Fourth Quarter and full year 2025 Earnings Call. 2025 marked an important year for AEye as we continued building the foundation for commercial scale. Over the course of the year, we expanded our customer base, increased engagement activity and delivered revenue growth as customers progressed through their evaluation cycle. At the same time, we significantly strengthened our balance sheet, ending the year with nearly $87 million in cash, and we believe we are funded well into 2028. Importantly, we are also seeing broader market interest, including new RFIs, new strategic partnerships and additional autonomous trucking evaluation. We began 2025 with a plan to demonstrate that our technology, business model and balance sheet all position us as one of the most innovative companies in the LiDAR industry, and we executed against the key milestones we set out for the year with momentum on our business accelerating each quarter. Throughout the year, we made continuous progress against our growth strategy, including launching multiple products, OPTIS, our fully integrated physical AI solution and STRATOS that firmly set the industry bar for detection range. Executing on our commercialization strategy, keeping our spending under rigorous control, while investing in sales, marketing and operations, and we build a financial foundation that offers the long-term stability that partners in our sector look for. We believe AEye is emerging as a differentiated provider in long-range LiDAR with capabilities that address some of the most challenging perception problems in autonomy. The LiDAR sector has undergone significant consolidation over the past several years, and AEye has emerged from this period with a stronger balance sheet, a capital-light operating model and a growing commercial pipeline. Our Apollo center was near infinite software programmability and the one kilometer detection range is driving increased engagement with a growing set of prospective customers. We are also advancing several commercial discussions that stem from successful POCs which are creating clear pathways toward high-volume program. In defense and aviation, we are now engaged across multiple opportunities, including repeat business with an existing defense customer. We are also supporting program in UGV, UAV and counter detection applications, where our long-range performance and ability to choose scan patterns and software are particularly valuable. We've seen this momentum translate into concrete activity. We've received multiple new RFQs and we entered a new strategic partnership with a distributor, which strengthens our positioning and helps unlock opportunities outside of the United States. Taken together, these developments validate the inroads we've made in sectors where our performance advantages matter most. We are also seeing promising traction in commercial and ground mobility, including early conversations in long-haul trucking and rail where long-range sensing and software-defined field of view control are increasingly important for next-generation safety systems. In the transportation and infrastructure sectors, our momentum is equally strong. As announced in June, we were selected by a major global transportation OEM and for a program representing a $30 million revenue opportunity. We are now in the first stage of deployment. And based on the current outlook from the customer, we expect to enter a broader phase of deployment in the second half of 2026. We recently completed a successful intelligent transportation systems POC in Australia, and are now discussing commercial term. Multiple smart intersection deployments are in progress across the U.S., and we also signed an LOI with an IT attributions provider which we expect will unlock opportunities in Korea and the broader APAC region. These engagements reinforce the strength of our diversified go-to-market strategy and support our expectation that nonautomotive will be a meaningful contributor to near-term revenue. This increased deal flow is feeding directly into our POC and quoting pipeline, and we expect this level of activity to continue throughout the year as our technology becomes increasingly visible across strategic markets. As these engagements progress, we expect to see increased conversion into deployment phases, which is where revenue can begin to scale. CES 2026 fixed served as a barometer of strong market interest. And as a result, we generated over 130 high-quality leads across automotive, trucking and a broader set of physical AI-driven market. The physical AEye market is estimated to represent a $5 billion market today. And according to a recent analysis by Barclays, a potential $1 trillion opportunity of 2035. AEye's software-defined LiDAR architecture positions us as a core enabling layer of this emerging ecosystem. The launch of STRATOS, our ultra-long range third-generation LiDAR center, that's the tone with its unprecedented detection range at a disruptive price point. STRATOS is not nearly in addition to our portfolio, it is a value multiplier for our software-defined architecture. By delivering a 1.5-kilometer detection range and resolution greater than twice that of our flagship Apollo sensor STRATOS redefines the boundaries of high-performing sensing, while maintaining a form factor, automotive OEMs can sit behind a windshield. By preserving a 500-meter range, even when placed behind glass, we offer OEMs a streamlined packaging solution that simplifies weather mitigation and avoids the aesthetic compromises required when employing roof-mounted sensor. Apollo and STRATOS are built around a 1550-nanometer architecture, which allows higher power transmission, while remaining eye safe. The result is improving long-range detection and more reliable classification of low reflectivity objects at distant. Capabilities that are increasingly important for applications, such as highway economy, industrial automation and defense. Through our global Tier 1 manufacturing partner, LITEON, we have secured dedicated manufacturing capacity of 60,000 Apollo units annually. Our supply chain is globally diversified, giving us the flexibility and resiliency to mitigate geopolitical risk and shifting trade policies. Our tech stack was derived from off-the-shelf components from the Telecom industry, allowing us to compete on cost, while providing mass manufacturability and high performance to customer. Our partnership with NVIDIA remains a cornerstone for our automotive and industrial market opportunity. We have demonstrated Apollo LiDAR integrated with NVIDIA's next-generation DRIVE AGX Thor platform, the future centralized brain of NVIDIA-equipped autonomous vehicle. This helps to ensure compatibility with leading autonomous compute platform and meet rigorous standards and transparency with regard to sensor performance. I'm also very excited to confirm that we are joining the NVIDIA Halos AI systems Inspection Lab, which bolsters our commitment to build products that meet the safety and robustness requirement of the automotive industry. Beyond automotive, our OPTIS platform, powered by NVIDIA Jetson Orin is transforming legacy infrastructure. By providing a turnkey vision to action pipeline we are delivering real-time detection and analysis to sectors that lack the resources to build their own AI perception stack. We have expanded this ecosystem through strategic partnerships with software partners by Flasheye or ITS, airport security and other application, Blue-Band or smart city traffic management, Black Sesame Technologies for high-speed rail and most recently, Vueron for dynamic perception required by moving vehicles, such as rail and truck. Together, these partnerships are turning technological opportunities into actionable revenue pipeline today. I will now turn the call over to Conor Tierney who will review our fourth quarter results and our uniquely strong capital position and performance LiDAR sector.

Conor Tierney

Executives
#4

Thank you, Matt. We closed the year with strong commercial momentum. In Q4, we shipped the highest number of Apollo units in our history, demonstrating increased customer readiness and execution capability. Customer traction also continues to deepen. Since our last earnings call, our active customer count has grown from 12 to 16. Active engagements are up over 40% and, after close, are about more than 30% and quarter-over-quarter. We are seeing broad activity across both automotive and non-automotive opportunities. Repeat business amongst customers is emerging as a bright spot, reinforcing product market fit and validating the performance advantages of our architecture. While we are in the early stages of this revenue ramp our underlying metrics provide clear visibility into future growth. Fourth quarter GAAP operating expenses were $8.3 million, up from $7.8 million in the third quarter of 2025, primarily due to increased engineering spend and onetime payroll costs. Fourth quarter non-GAAP operating expenses were $7.5 million, an increase of $1.4 million compared to the prior quarter of $6.1 million, primarily driven by the same cost drivers just discussed. We reported a GAAP net loss of $7.3 million or $0.17 per share in the fourth quarter compared to a GAAP net loss of $9.3 million or $0.30 per share in the third quarter of 2025. The decrease was primarily due to smaller changes and the fair value of our convertible note and warrants, as we fully repaid the note in the fourth quarter and had fewer outstanding warrants this quarter. These decreases were partially offset by the increased costs noted earlier. On a non-GAAP basis, our net loss was $6.8 million or $0.15 per share compared to a non-GAAP net loss of $5.4 million or $0.17 per share in the prior quarter. The increase in non-GAAP net loss was driven primarily by increased contract development expenses and onetime payroll costs. Excluding net financing proceeds over the quarter cash burn increased to $7.5 million from $6.4 million in the third quarter of 2025, primarily related to increased engineering costs, professional services and insurance premiums as well as purchases of certain long-lead components. During the fourth quarter, we raised an additional $10 million, which included funding from a well-known institutional investor. By leveraging Tier 1 manufacturing partners instead of making heavy investments in internal infrastructure, we continue to maintain the lowest burn rate amongst our peers. We ended the year with cash, cash equivalents and market level securities of $86.5 million. This war chest provides us with an operational runway well into 2028. And importantly, we have simplified our capital structure. We have fully repaid our 2025 convertible note and eliminated legacy warrants associated with our convertible notes, leaving AEye virtually debt-free, establishing the company as a reliable long-term partner for leading automotive OEMs and high-performance industrial partners demanding multiyear production cycles. Moving on to our cash burn outlook on Slide 8. We expect full year 2026 cash burn to be within the range of $30 million to $35 million, reflecting increased investment in sales and marketing to support our go-to-market efforts, scaling our operational capabilities and executing on customer deployments as we transition from the valuation into commercial programs. Apollo continues to be the foundation of our competitiveness and growth strategy. Apollo's core architecture paired with software flexibility allows us to rapidly tailor our performance, feel the view and feature sets without requiring hardware redesign. This scalability is central to our rapid roadmap expansion, which enables us to continue to lead the high-performance market at significantly lower development costs. A prime example is STRATOS, which leverages Apollo's core architecture as software define ability to allow us accelerated access to a broader set of customers. STRATOS demonstrates how we can keep development costs low, while maintaining the performance profile that differentiates us. And this approach is resonating strongly with OEMs and industrial customers who require flexibility without sacrificing capability. We expect 2026 to show increasing momentum towards our revenue generation inflection point. As our technical engagements begin to translate into volume commitments and a durable revenue ramp. Apollo's differentiated performance as software-defined flexibility, continue to deepen engagements across markets, while our capital-light model and cost competitive tech stack allows us to scale efficiently and maintain one of the most attractive cost structures in the industry. I will now hand it back to Matt to wrap things up.

Matthew Fisch

Executives
#5

Thank you, Conor. As we enter 2026, we believe AI is positioned on a much stronger foundation than a year ago. Our customer base is growing, engagement activity continues to increase and our balance sheet provides the runway needed to execute our strategy. The focus now is converting these engagements into deployment and building of durable revenue ramp. We look forward to updating you on our progress throughout the year. Operator, we are now ready to open the floor for questions.

Operator

Operator
#6

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Poe Fratt with Alliance Global Partners.

Poe Fratt

Analysts
#7

Can you just talk about the big jump in your customer base this quarter. I think you mentioned you jumped to 16, and can you give me any more detail on sort of your pipeline, if you will. You're talking about a lot more engagements, if you can sort of give us more color on that, that would be helpful.

Matthew Fisch

Executives
#8

Thanks, Poe. This is Matt, and I'll take that and happy 2026 to you. Thank you for joining us. So I hope you got a strong impression from the the script earlier that there's a lot going on at the company right now. And the 16 customer -- active customer number that we talked about just really reflective of our growing activity and growing business opportunity in our nonautomotive pipeline. If you take that 16 and now you start looking back upstream, we really saw a sizable jump, not just customer interest, but the number of outbound proposals to customers. These translate into this increased customer base and really look at this as a feeder from these proof-of-concept projects. And so we've got a lot more in the pipe coming behind these. By the way, across all the market segments, we had mentioned in the call, that's a thing. The interest is very broad across the market segments. And so therefore, what we can expect to see going forward is a corresponding jump in the number of customers, in other words, a number of paid POC projects.

Poe Fratt

Analysts
#9

Okay. Great. And then are there any new developments on the NVIDIA-an partnership? And then can you just talk about how you see that adding value in 2026 and beyond?

Matthew Fisch

Executives
#10

Yes. So look, First and foremost, I think you saw the press release earlier, our relationship with NVIDIA continues to deepen. And there are 2 things that we spoke about in the call earlier. Number one, let's start chronologically with our work with NVIDIA during CES. I believe at CES, we were the only LiDAR vendor to show Apollo integrated with NVIDIA's Thor platform, that's their DRIVE AGX Thor platform, it's their latest and greatest autonomous platform for ADAS and autonomous driving, and we're out there on the cutting edge, showing that with Apollo, and secondly, there was an announcement earlier they joined the Halos AI Lab with NVIDIA. I think really the way to look at this, it shows NVIDIA's interest and our strengthened commitments into the automotive process, right? There's an unbelievable amount rigor functional safety, all these kind of things, and this partnership deepening with NVIDIA, with Halos really increases our momentum and our commitment to the quality, safety and readiness that's required certainly, in our opinion, shows NVIDIA's continued broadening interest in Apollo and the products we have here at AEye.

Poe Fratt

Analysts
#11

Okay. And then you said the CES. And can you talk about sort of any pull-through that you see from on LIDAR from being at the conference.

Matthew Fisch

Executives
#12

It was incredibly positive for us, Poe. Conor and I were both there personally. We had a full team on the floor at CES and the amount of interest in LiDAR, in my view, is off the charts. I mean there were 2 or 3 days there in a row where it was hard to even leave our booth because we had people backed up. The OEMs are back out on the floor, and I'm talking about automotive OEMs and also in particular, trucking even though they may not have had large boots at the conference, their ADAS teams and their engineering leaders and purchasing leaders were definitely out on the floor and we could see a huge spike and jump in interest, especially in the auto OEM passenger vehicle market and trucking. I think there was one thing that really stood out to me above and beyond that, as we are approached by the leaders of these organizations are really asking about readiness for mass manufacturability. And I think this is where our partnership with LITEON really struck a positive court. In fact, we had our partner LITEON there at the conference, and it was -- we felt that the OEMs are really impressed by our approach by using a seasoned Tier 1 automotive supplier to supply into this market and really help increase our credibility.

Conor Tierney

Executives
#13

I just like to add to what Matt said there, Poe, good to talk to you here. I would just say, aside from the traction in automotive and trucking, we walked away with something like 130 leads out of the event. And even with some of those leads right now, that are maturing into evaluations. So this is feeding directly into our funnel and actually feeding downstream in terms of POC momentum. So I think that was just a great outcome all in all.

Poe Fratt

Analysts
#14

Great Conor. And then Matt, you emphasized the balance sheet's not only cleaned up with the converts and some of the legacy warrants gone, but you have a cash runway into 2028. Can you just talk about your capital raising. Should this be -- should you be pretty quiet for 2026? Or sort of what's your capital strategy or capital raising strategies as we look at '26.

Matthew Fisch

Executives
#15

Yes, sure. We'll have Conor jump in on that one.

Conor Tierney

Executives
#16

Yes. That's a great question. And look, what I would say is we're well capitalized at this point. You mentioned the fact that we had $87 million or so in cash, and that really kind of gives us enough runway well into 2028, just assuming we maintain a similar burn rate to what's projected here in 2026. What I would say is the question is not really when will we raise capital. It's more about strategic optionality. And what I mean by that is really pushing commercial traction this year, right, with a number of opportunities. You can see the strength in the pipeline, the momentum, the increase in quoting activity and POCs. And so we will be evaluating opportunities for growth and if that's why company's best interest and deliver shareholder value, then that's something that we may consider.

Operator

Operator
#17

Our next question comes from the line of Greg Mesniaeff with Kingswood Capital Partners.

Gregory Mesniaeff

Analysts
#18

Two quick questions. What kind of CapEx range are you modeling for 2026?

Matthew Fisch

Executives
#19

Over to you, Conor.

Conor Tierney

Executives
#20

Yes. I mean we haven't given specific guidance on that, Greg. What I would say, it should be relatively low, probably at least under the $1 million range. So not a huge amount, and that's just purely because of our business model, this capital-light business model, right? We're working with our contract manufacturer and our Tier 1 partner to LITEON. So they really do bear the brunt of a lot of that heavy capital investment. So that's one of the upsides of our business model.

Gregory Mesniaeff

Analysts
#21

Sure. And when you look at your existing and new customers that you're adding. The current systems you're delivering to them, can you give us some idea of the percentage split between hardware and software and how that may change over time.

Matthew Fisch

Executives
#22

Over to you as well, Conor.

Conor Tierney

Executives
#23

Yes. What I would say is we're probably predominantly hardware-based right now because this is really about selling sensors. Now we've started to shift into the software piece with OPTIS, and that's where we think we can add a lot of value going forward. And we're starting to see some revenue there. But I would say the vast majority of it is still hardware revenue. One thing that I'm really enthusiastic about is just because of this software definability of the sensor and the flexibility there, is what we're seeing is there's opportunities to upsell for customization. And so this could be working with, we'll take the defense industry as an example, upselling on customizations to enhance range or to enhance certain feature sets. So there's a lot of flexibility there. So I think we're really just scratching the service in terms of the revenue-generating opportunities there.

Operator

Operator
#24

Next question comes from the line of Richard Shannon with Craig-Hallum.

Richard Shannon

Analysts
#25

Apologies, I jumped on the call a little late here as the flight was delayed here today. And I think there was an earlier question that I sort of missed the answer on, Matt. So I hopefully it's a repeat, but your announcement today coincident with the earnings you're about partnership with NVIDIA and this Halos ecosystem, would love to understand what application or application sets this is addressing here? How does it overlap or extend what you've been doing with NVIDIA to date? And I know at points in the past, you talked about NVIDIA's Hyperion platform? Is there any relationship to that as well?

Matthew Fisch

Executives
#26

Yes. Thanks, Richard. Yes. Just a quick recap from earlier. This is a deepening and broadening the relationship with NVIDIA, specifically, it's targeted at the automotive space. But one of the things that we're collaborating with NVIDIA on through Halos is increasing our commitment, essentially bolstering our commitment to the amount of robustness, focus on functional safety, resiliency, reliability in the automotive space. So yes, I mean it's really a position under the broader umbrella of Hyperion and yet checking another box on the level of rigor that's required to be ready for automotive shipments.

Richard Shannon

Analysts
#27

Okay. I guess my second question is, I can't remember which one of you made the comment in the prepared remarks here, but your nice win you talked about last summer, the $30 million double transport win here. You talked about use of my wording here, a pickup in the second half of the year. Just would love to get a sense here of what that really means if you have any way you can quantify what kind of magnitude we're talking about here. And then ultimately, do you see the $30 million eventually being realized by this customer within that 3-year time frame that I think you're expecting?

Matthew Fisch

Executives
#28

Yes. I'm going to start this one off and I'll talk -- I'll hand the quantitative piece over to Conor. But this is -- as you well know, it's not commodity off-the-shelf technology, and it just takes time for an OEM in this space to properly test and evaluate. And as they gain more confidence in their use case to do broader deployments, broader and broader builds over time. And that's why the process is stretched out over 2 to 3 years here, which just really happens to do with the newness of the technology and the need for the OEM to really start in a modest way and then start expanding their deployments over time. I don't know, Conor, why don't you comment on just a little bit more detail on the quantitative part of this. Are you there Conor?

Richard Shannon

Analysts
#29

For what it's worth. I don't hear him on here, can you hear him Matt?

Matthew Fisch

Executives
#30

No, I can hear you, Richard. So why don't I pick it up and if we get Connor back. But look, the short answer is...

Conor Tierney

Executives
#31

I'm back online here. Yes. Sorry, Richard. What I would say is there is an assumption that it's going to contribute some revenue here in 2026. And as Matt alluded to, we're really going through the kind of validation steps right now. And we expect obviously kind of back half of this year to do some initial deployments. I don't think we're going to see a meaningful amount of revenue and probably until 2027. But that said, there will be some contribution, and that's sort of baked into the cash guidance numbers that we gave.

Richard Shannon

Analysts
#32

Okay. Perfect. I'll ask one more question and jump out of the line here. This is regarding both OPTIS and STRATOS. I'm going to ask kind of a 2-part question. The first part of it is backward looking and then the second part is forward looking here. So in terms of backward looking, were any of the customers that you gained the 16, I think you mentioned here, any of those related to OPTIS and STRATOS in '25 here? And then what do we think about -- how should we think about kind of milestones or the number of customers you might be expected to gain in 2026 from both OPTIS and STRATOS. I guess I'd be particularly interested in STRATOS given the -- what looks like some great performance metrics here, but I'd love to hear some comments on both.

Matthew Fisch

Executives
#33

Yes, sure. And I think Conor touched on this a little bit earlier, let's hit OPTIS, first. That number -- the numbers we talked about earlier, absolutely include OPTIS numbers. And as Conor mentioned earlier, we have a modest portion of the revenue driven by software today, but we do expect that to grow, overtime. On the STRATOS side, it's definitely also baked in to what we talked about earlier in terms of active customers and POC. I'll say a little bit more about it. If you think about those really high-speed applications that you might see in defense where you have attached to a vehicle that's moving very quickly. And also, it could be something like a locomotive or a long train. It carries a lot of weight in these extreme stopping distance. I would say those are most definitely related to our inspiration to build a product like STRATOS, and again, I would expect us to be expanding here later this year and into next year as well. But we'll let Conor comment on any specifics.

Conor Tierney

Executives
#34

Yes. I mean I think that's correct. We only really truly launched STRATOS in January. So we're still at the early stages of the opportunities there. But what I would say is most of the sales in 2025 were driven by Apollo and OPTIS, and I think the opportunities were pretty broad, right? They were a mix of defense-related opportunities, ITS applications, so a wide variety of sectors and rail as Matt mentioned as well. And what we're really seeing is some common denominators there range is obviously critical, but the software definability piece is really resonating. And in some sectors, that's just like a must have, right, just the flexibility to be able to tune and change stand patterns, and it really gives us an edge on legacy kind of sensing modalities, such as radar and camera and even traditional fixed LiDAR-type scanners. So yes, yes, just I think we're very enthusiastic coming into 2026, now that we have STRATOS in the portfolio as well, that's going to open up a lot of other opportunities for us, too.

Operator

Operator
#35

Next question comes from the line of Casey Ryan with WestPark Capital.

Casey Ryan

Analysts
#36

Great update. I was hoping to go back a little bit back to the future a little bit. And I just wonder if you could comment a little bit about automotive, I think we're hearing like there's some reset in thinking about LiDAR and automotive, but sort of L3 plans maybe being recast. But do you see that benefiting you as maybe those solutions are we thought a lot of the major OEMs?

Matthew Fisch

Executives
#37

Yes. Sure. Happy to take that one, Casey. Good to hear from you again. Look, I'll just start with CES this year and also it kind of leads into Q4 as well. The OEM guys are back. So if anything, our interest level that we're seeing has jumped, I would say, over the last few months, we've seen 2 RFIs inbound in that space. And so if anything, activity has increased. I mean, yes, we're not fully dependent or solely dependent on the automotive industry or diversifying nicely. But I would say the interest has gone up and the engagement model has gone up over the last few months. The thing that I really like about it is now when we're having these conversations, those OEMs are leading with, hey, we're thinking about getting more serious and going more broadly, do you really have the manufacturing shops, to deliver in mass production, and this is where our relationship with LITEON has really paid dividends in those conversations. So I would say interest level up.

Casey Ryan

Analysts
#38

Okay. Terrific. And then one -- just second question on automotive. Do you see L3, L4, L5 kind of roadmaps across both, I guess, propulsion types. It feels like a lot of the early ADAS stuff was done on EV platforms. But I know there's no technical reason why they can't be done on sort of ICE vehicles as well. But have you seen that proposed, I guess, for both types of vehicles moving forward?

Matthew Fisch

Executives
#39

Yes. So in general, I'd just say we're not we don't have that level of visibility necessarily. This is sensitive OEM roadmap stuff, but the technology is surely agnostic that much we know. And yes, and again, I think to your question about L3, L4, both camps, the OEM piece is a lot about L3 and then interest we see coming out of trucking space at CES, especially a lot of interest in the L4 space. But the technology is agnostic.

Casey Ryan

Analysts
#40

Yes, great. And then sort of with this new long-range product, are there opportunities, I guess, especially in trucking or as you mentioned, train and rail, where you guys maybe have made some traction on the short range and now obviously, prior to having a long-range sensor or maybe they were using someone else, but maybe you're sort of getting 2 opportunities instead of one, I guess.

Matthew Fisch

Executives
#41

Yes. Actually, it's great that you mentioned that is I'll give you an example of a conversation that came out at CES, just as an example, as the trucking guys are getting out there on the road and getting some miles under their belt, they're finding new cases. that are being exposed to for example, you've got a truck that maybe is pulling off on the side free way, it has to merge safely back into traffic, and that involves looking backwards into the side. And that's where we're seeing a demand, which I'll call for medium-range LiDAR that became known to us at yes, it was trucking OEM visits, and Apollo is a really good fit for those medium-range applications. So definitely interest there in the Apollo solution for things like that.

Casey Ryan

Analysts
#42

Okay. Terrific. And then just the last question because I know we've covered a lot of the financial questions. But what are your thoughts about -- I think other people in the LiDAR space are now combining cameras, most specifically into their solutions, but maybe potentially setting themselves up to integrate multiple sensors. What are your thoughts about the product roadmap? Does that matter? Is that sort of people future-proofing, or is that not that important today in today's market? You guys are obviously making good progress.

Matthew Fisch

Executives
#43

No, thanks for that. And look, one of the things we're seeing with all these topics we discussed about our pipeline growth. What we see very, very clearly in terms of what's driving that pipeline growth are the new use cases that LiDAR is enabling. And so we're just focused on building great LiDAR and LiDAR that's really easy to integrate. And in the case of OPTIS, ensuring that for those customers who can't build their own AI layer that, that integrates very simply and easily. So for us, it's about the magic that LiDAR unlocks in terms of new use cases and new levels of visibility that camera doesn't provide today, and we're incredibly busy with that alone.

Operator

Operator
#44

[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back over to Matt Fisch for closing remarks.

Matthew Fisch

Executives
#45

I just want to take a moment to thank everybody for joining us today. I really enjoy the dialogue and grateful for all of you following our journey as things are really starting to get exciting here. So looking forward to updating everybody next quarter. Thank you, and have a great evening.

Operator

Operator
#46

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining and you may now disconnect.

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