Shanghai Gives Birth to a Super Unicorn Worth $24 Billion: A Post-85s Academic Genius Develops LiDAR, Ranking First Globally

Recently, Shanghai has produced a super unicorn: Hesai Technology, a lidar company, plans to list in Hong Kong. According to data from August 2025, Hesai Technology's total market value reached $3.414 billion (approximately 24 billion yuan).

Its business is lidar, which is a key component (the "eyes") in intelligent driving.

Eleven years ago, three post - 1985 elites (Li Yifan, Sun Kai, and Xiang Shaoqing) who graduated from top universities returned to China to found Hesai Technology, and now it has become an industry leader.

In terms of the market share of lidar in China in 2024, Hesai Technology ranked first with a 35.0% share; in the global automotive lidar market, its share was as high as 37%, making it the world's largest automotive lidar supplier.

Through the case of Hesai Technology, let's explore what structural opportunities lidar is incubating.

01

The founders of Hesai Technology are Li Yifan, Xiang Shaoqing, and Sun Kai.

Li Yifan graduated from Tsinghua University and then went to the United States to study, obtaining a doctorate from the University of Illinois. He once served as the chief engineer of Western Digital Corporation in the United States.

Xiang Shaoqing graduated from Tsinghua University and Stanford University. He once served as a product architect for next - generation product development at Apple.

Like Li Yifan and Xiang Shaoqing, Sun Kai often contacted them because they were in the United States and were alumni. In 2013, the three of them founded Hesai Technology. At that time, Li Yifan was still working at Western Digital Corporation and also served as the company's CEO.

The company initially focused on the research and development of high - performance lidar. In 2016, the company launched its first automotive - grade lidar. In the following three years, the products were gradually adopted on a large scale by autonomous driving companies.

In 2021, the company achieved mass production of automotive - grade lidar for pre - installation. As of 2023, the number of Hesai lidars installed in vehicles reached nearly 160,000, ranking first in the world and making it the first domestic company to achieve large - scale pre - installation mass production.

Its customers include car companies such as NIO, XPeng, Li Auto, and JIDU, as well as autonomous driving solution providers such as Baidu and Pony.ai.

Before the establishment of Hesai, there were similar products in the market, but Hesai improved the vehicle's environmental perception ability and better solved the problems of "not seeing far" and "not seeing clearly" of cameras and millimeter - wave radars.

This (lidar products) is also the company's most core source of income.

In 2023, the revenue from this product was 1.26 billion yuan, accounting for 92.2% of the total revenue. Among them, the AT128 was the core product, with a single - product shipment volume of more than 150,000 units.

02

The lidar industry has gone through three stages:

• Scientific research and surveying stage (around 2000): mainly used for geographical surveying and scientific research experiments.

• The rise of autonomous driving stage (after 2010): Companies such as Waymo were the first to use lidar, which became a standard for autonomous driving.

• Automotive - grade mass production stage (after 2020): With the popularization of new energy vehicles and intelligent driving, lidar entered large - scale pre - installation.

In 2023, the global automotive lidar market size was approximately $1.7 billion, and it is expected to increase to $6.8 billion by 2028, with a compound annual growth rate of approximately 31%.

The core driving force for growth comes from new energy vehicles, and the accelerated implementation of high - level assisted driving is the biggest demand explosion point.

Data shows that in 2023, the penetration rate of new cars equipped with lidar in China exceeded 5%, and it is expected to reach more than 15% in 2025, which means that the market space is expanding rapidly.

Foreign manufacturers such as Velodyne and Luminar were early leaders, but they encountered bottlenecks in mass production and cost control. In contrast, Chinese manufacturers, leveraging their local advantages, occupied three of the top five global pre - installation shipment volumes in 2023. Hesai ranked first with a 47% global market share, followed closely by RoboSense, InnoLidar, etc.

In 2022, Hesai's revenue was 1.22 billion yuan, increasing to 1.36 billion yuan in 2023; the net loss narrowed from 1.08 billion yuan to 0.97 billion yuan. In the second quarter of this year, Hesai Technology achieved a revenue of 706 million yuan, a year - on - year increase of 54%, and turned a net profit. In terms of delivery volume, the total delivery volume of lidar in the first half of 2025 increased by 276.2% year - on - year.

It is worth mentioning that Hesai is one of the very few profitable autonomous driving companies.

This is first attributed to the growth of its orders.

In 2024, the total delivery volume of Hesai's lidar was nearly 502,000 units, a year - on - year increase of 126%, achieving double - digit growth in delivery volume for four consecutive years. Among them, the annual delivery volume of ADAS lidar was as high as 456,400 units. In the fourth quarter, 193,238 ADAS lidars were directly delivered, a year - on - year increase of 140.3%.

As of February 2025, Hesai had reached mass - production fixed - point cooperation agreements with 120 models of 22 domestic and foreign automobile manufacturers, including 9 of the top 10 Chinese automobile manufacturers in terms of market value (in 2024).

Secondly, it is attributed to its cost control.

For example, the ATX lidar developed based on its fourth - generation chip architecture is expected to see its price drop to $200 in 2025, a 50% decrease compared to the previous generation, which enables its products to penetrate into 100,000 - yuan - level vehicles.

03

In addition to passenger - car autonomous driving, multiple opportunities have emerged in the autonomous driving track in recent years, such as new scenarios like robots, intelligent transportation, and unmanned logistics vehicles. These emerging demands are more friendly to new players, especially in the field of low - cost solid - state lidar.

Take the robot application scenario as an example. In the fields of logistics robots, delivery robots, and service robots, lidar is indispensable.

Among the world's top 10 L4 autonomous driving companies, Hesai Technology's products cover 9 of them, providing key technical support for functions such as autonomous navigation and obstacle avoidance of various robots in complex environments. With the booming development of the robot industry, the market space is extremely broad.

In emerging markets, such as emerging tracks like intelligent security, smart cities, and surveying, lidar has also begun to stand out.

This article is from the WeChat official account “Pencil News” (ID: pencilnews). The author is Pencil News. It is published by 36Kr with authorization.