Pony.ai (PONY.US): The profitability behind Robotaxi starting to make a profit

When the autonomous driving industry is still discussing "when can it be profitable", Pony.ai (PONY.US; 02026) has provided the answer with a financial report: it is now. In 2025, this 9-year-old autonomous driving company has successfully operated a commercial closed loop in the field of Robotaxi, which is referred to as the "first true application of physical AI". The annual financial report shows that the revenue from autonomous driving travel services is 116 million RMB, a year-on-year increase of 128.6%, with the actual passenger revenue increasing by nearly 400%. More importantly, the company has achieved profitability for a single vehicle in the first-tier cities of Guangzhou and Shenzhen - this means that Robotaxi is no longer a money-burning experiment, but a business that can make profits. "Large-scale production is the cornerstone of profitability." Pony.ai co-founder and CFO Wang Haojun told GMTEight at a media event in Guangzhou on April 1. Indeed, it can be seen from the detailed performance breakdown that Pony.ai's deployment speed of the seventh generation of autonomous driving taxis has exceeded expectations. The fleet size has grown from 270 vehicles at the end of 2024 to over 1,400 vehicles now, an increase of more than 4 times, and is expected to exceed 3,000 vehicles by the end of 2026. The performance in the Shenzhen market is particularly convincing. On March 22, 2026, the average net income per vehicle in this market reached a historical high of 394 RMB, with an average order volume of 25 orders per vehicle. Achieving profitability in the initial stage of scaling up validates the economic viability of the commercial model of L4-level autonomous driving taxis. Regarding the profitability of single vehicles in areas like Shenzhen, Wang Haojun pointed out that the achievement of a positive unit economics (UE) for Robotaxi excludes fixed costs and can directly derive a commercial economic model that can achieve overall profitability by expanding the scale. This means that with the expansion of the fleet size, the company will have a larger gross profit margin space, ultimately effectively driving the continuous improvement of the group's overall profitability level. As the fleet size expands to 3,000 vehicles, Pony.ai's revenue structure is undergoing a qualitative change. In 2025, the revenue from the Robotaxi business was 116 million RMB, a year-on-year increase of 129%. The proportion of Robotaxi revenue in total revenue increased from about 10% to about 18.5%, driving the overall gross profit margin from 15.2% to 15.7%. The revenue from the Robotruck business also reached 284 million RMB as it expanded its commercial applications. The demand for autonomous driving domain controllers increased, with technology licensing and application service revenue reaching 229 million RMB, a year-on-year increase of 19.7%, and the delivery volume of domain controllers increased by 5 times compared to 2024, showing a steady growth trend. In the face of the challenge of balancing the continuous improvement of Robotaxi profitability and the pressure on gross profit caused by increased business expansion investment, Wang Haojun provided an explanation logic of "prioritizing revenue expansion." "First, as our high-margin business, the continuous increase in the proportion of RoboTaxi business will inevitably drive up the overall gross profit margin. Second, if we want to expand the RoboTaxi business into more areas - whether it is to enter the entire Shenzhen New Land Tool Planning & Architectural Design or to extend to new areas in existing cities like Guangzhou and Shenzhen - in the short term, although there may be some pressure on gross profit, the gross profit level of this business is still far higher than that of the RoboTruck and Licensing and applications sectors. What is our core priority at the moment? Is it to prioritize increasing the gross profit margin, or is it to prioritize revenue expansion? The answer is undoubtedly the latter - revenue growth must be driven by the RoboTaxi business. Because the growth of RoboTaxi will increase its proportion in total revenue, naturally driving the improvement of the group's overall gross profit margin," he added. It is worth noting that although Pony.ai has expanded its operating areas from the four first-tier cities in China to new first-tier cities like Hangzhou and Changsha; and overseas markets such as Croatia and Singapore through partnerships with Uber and Rimac's Verne, respectively, market data shows that its technology and operating costs are also decreasing. For example, the cost of the automatic driving suite BOM for the seventh generation vehicle model has decreased by 70% compared to the sixth generation, with the cost of the onboard computing unit decreasing by 80% and the cost of lidar decreasing by 68%; the ratio of remote support personnel to vehicles has increased from 1:20 last year to 1:30 or even higher today. In addition, Wang Haojun also revealed that the ongoing cost optimization work will continue - for example, the vehicle cost, which accounts for half of the total cost, is a key area that the company is continuously working to optimize; there is still room for further optimization in areas such as insurance, network services, and ground support personnel allocation.