When the autonomous driving industry was still debating "when profitability can be achieved," Pony AI Inc (PONY.US; 02026) provided an answer with its financial report: right now. In 2025, this nine-year-old autonomous driving company established a commercially viable closed-loop in the Robotaxi sector, which is regarded as the first true application of physical AI. The full-year financial report revealed that revenue from autonomous ride-hailing services reached 116 million RMB, a surge of 128.6% year-over-year, with passenger-paid revenue increasing by nearly 400%. More critically, the company has achieved positive per-vehicle profitability in two major first-tier cities, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. This signifies that Robotaxi is no longer a money-losing experiment but a viable business.
"Mass production scaling is the cornerstone of profitability," stated Wang Haojun, Co-Founder and CFO of Pony AI Inc, during a media exchange in Guangzhou on April 1st. A detailed breakdown of the performance indeed shows that the deployment speed of Pony.ai's seventh-generation autonomous taxi exceeded expectations. The fleet size expanded from 270 vehicles at the end of 2024 to over 1,400 vehicles currently, an increase of more than fourfold, with projections to exceed 3,000 vehicles by the end of 2026. The performance in the Shenzhen market is particularly convincing. On March 22, 2026, the market set a new record with average daily net revenue per vehicle reaching 394 RMB and average daily orders per vehicle hitting 25. Achieving profitability during the initial scaling phase validates the economic feasibility of the Level 4 autonomous taxi business model.
Regarding the achievement of positive per-vehicle profitability in regions like Shenzhen, Wang Haojun pointed out that Robotaxi achieving a positive unit economics model is calculated after excluding fixed costs. This directly leads to a business model where overall profitability can be achieved as scale expands. This implies that with the expansion of the fleet size, the company will experience greater gross profit margins, ultimately driving sustained improvement in the group's overall profitability level.
While the fleet size expands towards 3,000 vehicles, Pony AI's revenue structure is undergoing a qualitative transformation. In 2025, Robotaxi business revenue was 116 million RMB, a 129% increase year-over-year. The proportion of Robotaxi revenue to total revenue rose from approximately 10% to about 18.5%, contributing to an improvement in the overall gross margin from 15.2% to 15.7%. Revenue from the Robotruck business reached 284 million RMB as its commercial applications expanded. Demand for autonomous driving domain controllers grew, with revenue from technology licensing and application services reaching 229 million RMB, a 19.7% year-over-year increase. Deliveries of domain controllers increased fivefold compared to 2024, demonstrating robust growth.
Addressing the challenge of balancing continued improvement in Robotaxi profitability with increased investment in business expansion, and the resulting pressure on gross margins, Wang Haojun explained the logic is to "prioritize revenue expansion." "First, as our high-margin business, the continuous increase in Robotaxi's proportion will inevitably drive the overall gross margin higher. Secondly, expanding the Robotaxi business into more regions—whether entering new cities or extending to new districts within existing cities like Guangzhou and Shenzhen—will exert some pressure on gross margins in the short term. However, the gross margin level of this business remains significantly higher than that of the Robotruck and Licensing and applications segments. What is our current core priority? Is it prioritizing gross margin improvement or revenue expansion? The answer is unequivocally the latter—revenue growth must be driven by the Robotaxi business. Because growth in Robotaxi will increase its share of total revenue, thereby naturally driving an improvement in the group's overall gross margin," he added.
It is noteworthy that although Pony AI has expanded its domestic operations from four major first-tier cities to new first-tier cities like Hangzhou and Changsha, and entered markets such as Croatia and Singapore overseas through partnerships with Uber and Rimac's Verne, market data indicates that its technology and operational costs are also decreasing. For instance, the Bill of Materials cost for the autonomous driving kit in the seventh-generation model has decreased by 70% compared to the sixth generation, with the in-vehicle computing unit cost down 80% and LiDAR cost down 68%. The ratio of remote assistance personnel to vehicles has improved from 1:20 last year to 1:30, and even higher today. Furthermore, Wang Haojun revealed that subsequent cost optimization efforts will continue. For example, vehicle cost, which accounts for half of the total cost, is a key focus area for ongoing optimization. There is also further room for optimization in areas such as insurance, network services, and ground support personnel allocation.
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