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Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. My name is Joyce, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome you to AEye's 1st quarter 2026 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question at that time, please press star key, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star key then number one again. Thank you. I would like to turn the conference over.

Good afternoon, thank you for joining AEye's first quarter 2026 earnings call. I'm Keaton Olsen, 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 first quarter ended March 31st, 2026. 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 U.S. 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 our most recent periodic report. The statements to be made 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 a substitute for financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. You can find reconciliations of these metrics to the most directly comparable GAAP measures within the press release. Now let me pass the call over to Matt.

Thank you, Keaton, and thank you all for joining our first quarter 2026 earnings call. The quarter unfolded exactly as planned. Steady execution, no surprises, a commercial pipeline that continued to grow. Our ecosystem partnerships and manufacturing capability remain strong, and we now have more commercial engagement than at any point in our history. Our funnel continues to be the best barometer to benchmark our progress as revenue tends to be a lagging indicator. As of today, our revenue-generating customer count has grown from 16-21 since our last earnings call. I'm also pleased to report that both our issued quotes and active engagements have increased by nearly 40% quarter-over-quarter. These leading indicators, new technical engagements, inbound Requests for Information, and Proofs of Concept activity across automotive, trucking, defense, rail, infrastructure, and Intelligent Transportation Systems are all moving in the right direction.

These indicators are the data that investors should focus on to understand where we are headed. Quarterly revenue is up almost 60% year-over-year. This meaningful growth is driven by our software-defined architecture and long-range sensing performance and reflects the strong pipeline activity building behind it. AEye's technology gives machines vision, the foundation of physical AI and the prerequisite for every intelligent autonomous system being built today. The market is potentially very large and is accelerating. Barclays projects the physical AI market opportunity could reach as much as $1 trillion by 2035, and lidar is the enabling layer that makes it real. AEye's software-defined architecture positions us at the core of that ecosystem, and the lidar sector's ongoing consolidation has only strengthened our relative position. AEye is on stronger footing coming out of that consolidation than going in.

Better capitalized, leaner in structure, and with a commercial pipeline that continues to expand. The automotive industry appears to be squarely shifting toward AI-driven safety and software-defined vehicle architectures, and we believe long-range lidar is becoming essential to that architecture, not optional. Apollo offers best-in-class detection range when operating behind the windshield and is the only sensor we know of to be customer-proven to reliably detect objects at distances of up to 1 km.

Our Original Equipment Manufacturer engagement has increased, driven by recent robotaxi investment announcements, growing trade policy implications, and supply chain resilience concerns. With OEMs in the passenger vehicle segment actively seeking domestically sourced alternatives, AEye's manufacturing partnership directly addresses that demand. Multiple new RFIs arise in Q1 across both passenger and commercial vehicle segments, and OEMs have begun to reengage as L3 and L4 roadmaps are being reactivated and expanded.

In ground mobility, evaluations by autonomous trucking companies are deepening. Multiple companies have programs underway, and we are now shipping sensors into those evaluations. Apollo should be well-suited to serve this expanding addressable market. In transportation and infrastructure, OPTIS is now live at an active intersection in California in partnership with Flasheye and Blue-Band. Additional U.S. smart intersection deployments are in progress. Our APAC expansion strategy is also progressing. An Australian ITS POC has advanced into a discussion of commercial terms. In Korea, we recently concluded a successful customer roadshow, engaging with more than 10 OEMs across ITS, rail, and mobility sectors. Our business partnership with Advanced Technology Information in China remains strong, and we have four additional customers now evaluating our Apollo lidar product. In defense, active shipments continue with an existing U.S. contractor for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle wire detection.

Repeat business is emerging within that account, and Apollo is being evaluated for additional applications, including Unmanned Ground Vehicles and counter UAV, with an expectation of multiple new Requests for Quote. A significant development this quarter is our new commercial relationship with SynTech, a global defense systems company with established ties to leading defense primes. SynTech is actively promoting Apollo to its customers, and initial shipments are already underway. This partnership has the potential to unlock international defense and aviation markets outside of the United States, meaningfully expanding our addressable pipeline while complementing the domestic engagements we have already built. What drives selection across all of these verticals is consistent. AI is proven and reliable 1 km detection range with unlimited software-driven adjustability. That flexibility is paying dividends.

For example, a defense customer that initially engaged us for a one UAV wire detection application is now evaluating Apollo across three separate use cases without any change to the hardware they have already deployed in the field. This is a key differentiation factor that drives customers to select AEye. Stratos, the newest addition to our product lineup, extends our capability up to 1.5 km of detection range with 500 m performance behind a windshield at a disruptive price point. Through our manufacturing partnership with LITEON, AEye's supply chain is globally diversified, providing the flexibility and resilience to navigate geopolitical risk and shifting trade policies that we believe our peers cannot match. Our tech stack is derived from off-the-shelf telecom components, which allows us to compete on cost while delivering the mass manufacturability and high performance our customers require.

We continue to build on our partnership with NVIDIA, as it is the cornerstone of our automotive and industrial market positioning. Apollo is validated on DRIVE AGX Orin and has been demonstrated on DRIVE AGX Thor, NVIDIA's next-generation centralized automotive compute platform. In March, we joined the NVIDIA Halos AI Systems Inspection Lab, the world's first ANAB-accredited AI systems inspection lab. ANAB accreditation is generally viewed by OEMs as a critical marker of competence, reliability, and quality assurance within their supply chain. Our OPTIS platform, powered by NVIDIA Jetson Orin, extends our reach into infrastructure and industrial markets via our diversified software ecosystem. We are giving infrastructure and industrial customers a ready-made path into physical AI without having to build perception capability from scratch. I will now turn the call over to Conor to review our first quarter results.

Thank you, Matt. Our strong commercial momentum is broad-based, showing up across our full addressable market rather than any single vertical. Our active customer base now spans defense, intelligent transportation, rail, and logistics and security, a level of diversification we did not have a year ago, and the quality of that growth matters as much as the breadth. We are also seeing a growing pattern of repeat business across the customer base, a meaningful signal of product market fit, and a direct validation of the performance advantages of our architecture. Our commercial progress is beginning to attract broader institutional attention. We added new sell-side analyst coverage this quarter, and we are seeing a meaningful increase in both sell-side and buy-side interactions, an external signal that the commercial activity we have been describing is registering with the investment community.

The revenue ramp is in its early stages, but the underlying metrics building behind it give us confidence in the trajectory ahead. Before I move to the financials, I want to spend a minute on what we are increasingly hearing from customers. In my role bridging the financial and commercial sides of the business, this has become one of the most important strategic aspects investors are interested in right now. Customers today are not buying a sensor, they are buying a solution. The question they are asking is no longer whose lidar has the best spec sheet, it's who can help me deliver the end-to-end perception capability that my application needs faster and with less integration risk. That shift is showing up in nearly every Request for Information and RFQ we see. A customer in the security industry recently put it to us bluntly.

They don't want to buy from a hardware company. They want to buy from the front-end solution provider that integrates everything. That dynamic applies across all of our target markets. It is exactly the model AEye has built. Financially, the implication is meaningful. We do not need to absorb the cost or balance sheet impact of acquiring or building those capabilities ourselves to deliver a complete perception solution. A real efficiency advantage as we scale. The proof is in the deal flow. We are seeing a healthy uptick in customer demand for a full end-to-end physical AI solution, not just a standalone sensor. We have been able to assemble those solutions through our partner ecosystem with a speed and breadth that we believe our peers, constrained by what they own internally, cannot match. As our recent customer additions illustrate, this model is working.

Meaningful new programs in defense, infrastructure, and adjacent mobility have come to us through or alongside our partners. Moving on to financials. The first quarter 2026 revenue was $101,000, up almost 60% compared to $64,000 in Q1 2025, and up slightly versus Q4 2025. First quarter GAAP operating expenses were $8.9 million compared to $8.3 million in Q4 2025, reflecting higher stock-based compensation and professional fees, alongside continued investment in go-to-market and deployment execution. First quarter non-GAAP operating expenses were $7.4 million, slightly lower than $7.5 million in Q4 2025, primarily due to lower payroll costs, partially offset by increased professional fees.

We reported a GAAP net loss of $8.3 million, or $0.18 per share in the first quarter, compared to a GAAP net loss of $7.3 million, or $0.17 per share in Q4 2025. The increase was primarily driven by higher stock-based compensation and professional fees, partially offset by lower personnel costs. On a non-GAAP basis, our net loss was $6.7 million, or $0.15 per share, essentially flat compared to a non-GAAP net loss of $6.8 million, or $0.15 per share in Q4 2025. First quarter cash burn was $9.2 million, up from $7.5 million in Q4 2025, primarily reflecting Q1 seasonality. Our manufacturing model, built on Tier 1 partnerships rather than owned infrastructure, continues to keep our cash burn among the lowest in the sector.

We ended the first quarter with cash equivalents, and marketable securities of approximately $77.2 million, compared to $86.5 million at the end of Q4 2025. The sequential decrease reflects the deliberate deployment of resources into commercial operations, the go-to-market investment and operational execution required to convert the pipeline we are building. This is planned resource deployment, fully consistent with the guidance we set at the start of 2026, and we are tracking in line with that plan. We are reaffirming our 2026 full-year cash burn target of $30 million-$35 million, reflecting planned investment in commercial execution, sales and marketing, and the operational build required to support customers as they move from evaluation into deployment.

On a brief housekeeping note while we are discussing capital, in the days immediately following this call, AEye plans to file a new shelf registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Our existing shelf is expiring, this filing is a routine replacement, standard course of business. Our strategy has not changed, our capital framework has not changed, the filing does not reflect any near-term financing intentions. The company remains well capitalized with runway well into 2028. Our capital structure also remains simplified and strong, with AEye virtually debt-free. That matters directly to the OEMs and industrial customers we are targeting, where multi-year program confidence is a prerequisite for selection. The architectural point Matt made earlier compounds here.

The same software-defined platform that lets us tune Apollo to a customer's specific frame rate, range, and field of view is what lets us extend our accessible markets without rebuilding from the ground up each time. Stratos makes that compounding advantage concrete, a third-generation sensor that reaches new performance tiers without a proportional increase in investment, and one that drops directly into the same partner-led solutions model. Our peers with fixed sensor capability and internally owned software stacks cannot replicate that flexibility without absorbing significant development and integration costs. For customers who need capability without compromise, that equation continues to resonate. Our expectation for 2026 is unchanged. As technical engagements convert into program commitments, we are building the foundation from which a meaningful revenue inflection can follow. Getting there doesn't require outspending the field.

Apollo's performance lead, our software-defined architecture, and the partner-led model, combined with a cost structure built for scale, not overhead, make ours a capital-efficient path to a meaningful revenue inflection. I will now hand it back to Matt for closing remarks.

Thank you, Conor. As we look ahead to the remainder of 2026, the focus is unchanged. Convert engagements into deployments. The physical AI tailwinds driving this market are real and accelerating. Our technology continues to differentiate us. Our balance sheet provides the stability to execute. The partnerships we have built, from NVIDIA to LITEON to SynTech and others, lay the foundation for commercial scale. We are seeing the engagement activity and conversion momentum that give us confidence in our trajectory, and we look forward to demonstrating that progress in the quarters ahead. Operator, we are now ready to open the floor for questions.

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. For this session, we will allow up to three questions per person. If you would like to ask a question, please press star key, then number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star key, then number one again. Your first question comes from the line of Poe Fratt. Please go ahead.

Hey, can you just update us on the collaboration and partnership with NVIDIA, maybe give us a couple milestones that we should be looking for over the rest of the year on furthering that partnership?

Hey, welcome back, Poe. Good to hear your voice. I'd summarize the relationship at this point as strong and progressing. We talked about in Q1 that we had integrated with their latest platform, NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Thor, as well as joining the NVIDIA Halos AI Lab, which demonstrates our commitment and NVIDIA's support to automotive-grade solution. Even today, we've got a team out at NVIDIA's headquarters down in Silicon Valley. They started lunchtime. They're not leaving there until midnight, testing the latest Apollo software update. Really, it's about validation. The horsepower and the technology that NVIDIA brings to the table, they're so prolific with their platform in the automotive industry. What this is about is validating our capabilities and performance to be ready for that OEM integration phase.

You know, if you check the NVIDIA ecosystem website today, we're at the top of the list. Our performance is validated, we're the top performer on that list today. Look what we can, you know, think about, let's just say, between now and the end of the year. There's a validation process. I think that's the key task for us to be officially validated on NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Thor, that's gonna be our focus. For example, it's one of the main reasons why we're out there spending 12 hours today, so we can continue that validation process, get the feedback from NVIDIA, make the product stronger, tune it better, be ready for that OEM integration on their platform.

Great. That's helpful. When you look at your, you know, customer engagements, you know, up to 21 revenue generating, I think you know, shipments, can you just give us a little more color or detail on, you know, the commercial traction within certain key markets? Maybe, Matt, if you could highlight, you know, which markets have the shortest selling time versus other markets.

Sure. Absolutely. Thanks, Poe. Great question. Look, we're super excited. We're basically at the highest level of commercial engagement we've ever had in this company. I will tell you, we've added in that 31% growth, customers in every one of those six market segments that Conor talked about earlier.

Let's just jump into it. I mean, there's a lot of segments to cover, but let's focus on really a couple of key highlights first. One is defense. That's a real major standout. You know, first of all, our detection range, we believe, is best in industry. The defense guys and the aerospace guys and the ground vehicle part of that, they love that aspect of AEye's Apollo solution. The software-defined lidar piece allows us to be super flexible across different use cases, let's just say, in the defense market, for today, and really, you know, point out the evidence we talked about in the earnings call.

We're working with many major U.S. defense primes. There's one in particular that we called out, where not only we're getting repeat business, but they are scaling now Apollo across multiple of their business units, and we do that essentially with a new software configuration. There's no hardware change required. By the way, that expands to the six market segments that we mentioned. We can work across each of those without requiring a new hardware build or major hardware changes. You know, that's pretty big. I mean, in terms of market velocity, we are pleasantly surprised by how fast defense is moving. There's a new breed of players in the market also that are moving things along very quickly. I would just highlight that as, you know, high velocity market versus what we might expect traditionally.

Look, in other areas as well, we're now, you know, we have our OPTIS. This is our full perception solution. Conor talked about this earlier. It's not just about the sensor, it's about being able to collect data and then act. We have our OPTIS solution up on a traffic intersection in the Bay Area today, demonstrating that end-to-end capability. There'll be more to come in that space for sure. We also just completed in the intelligent traffic system space a POC in Australia, where they were trying to count trucks and delays in trucking and parking lots and manage fleet capacity. They tried to do it with camera and radar, and then they couldn't make it work. We've got them up and running now.

The end customer has seen it, and they're very happy with it. Look, it's about number one, customers are coming to us for that industry-leading detection range, 1 km for Apollo and 1.5 km for Stratus. Secondly, that software-defined element of our product now that only allows us to scale across market segments, but it also scaling within customers. I think those two attraction and differentiation points are really propelling us forward here.

Yeah, I think, Poe Fratt, you also brought up the question about lead times, and what we would say is probably two distinct patterns there. Certainly on the automotive side, we're seeing longer lead times. It could take maybe 2-3 years to get to Start of Production. On non-automotive, that timeline has certainly accelerated. That said, we're still seeing at least 6-12 months. It can vary between customers. Some customers, some sectors move quicker, others move slower. It's just, it all depends on the end customer and what their goals and priorities are.

Yeah. Hey, Poe Fratt, I forgot to mention SynTech as well, another commercial partner we've added this quarter, just further highlighting the expansion across multiple players in the defense space.

Great. Are you in discussions with any additional partners, Matt? Should we see an expansion like, say, you know, the defense industry, you know, is huge? Are there others out there that you're looking at partnering with?

Yeah, absolutely. I count that on two fronts, Poe. One is just the integrator or the end customer themselves. As we mentioned in the script, we've got like a 40% growth in our pipeline. That's just a leading indicator to entering the POC phase absolutely, across all of those segments. The second piece is, let's talk about OPTIS. This is where we have four partners today. Again, just if you take a step back above lidar and into the overall perception and intelligence solution, that's where those four partners are coming in, and they're enabling us to drop into each of those segments very quickly. We have an open platform. It's based on the NVIDIA Jetson platform. Makes it very easy for developers to work with it.

Even more importantly, as Conor had pointed out, in the finance section, is we're not constrained by what software we develop in-house. We've got these four guys that enable us to jump into these multiple market segments very quickly. Throughout the rest of the year, I think you can look forward to expansion of those number of software partnerships as well.

Great. Very helpful. Thanks, Matt. Thanks, Conor.

Thanks, Poe Fratt.

Your next question comes from the line of Casey Ryan of Amerx Financial. Please go ahead.

Matt, Conor, good afternoon. Thanks for the great update. There's a lot to chew on here. I actually just wanted to jump into the trucking opportunity. I think independently, we've actually been hearing some good things about your sensor performance in that space. With those opportunities in trucking, are they, would they ever be displacing internal lidar production or is it all kind of greenfield new type of truck builds for various manufacturers? How would you describe kind of the nature of the opportunity with some of the truck possibilities?

Hey, Casey. Thanks. Welcome aboard your new assignment here. We appreciate the coverage.

Absolutely.

Thank you for that. Look, it's, it is true, we talked in the script about how Apollo sensor's now in evaluation with multiple L4 trucking players. I think this has been further catalyzed with some of the announcements out there about big investments and capital being injected into that market. I would say that it's a mix of both of those things. There are concerns out there in the market today about, you know, we'll call it supply chain resiliency, where the sensors are built and where the IP comes from.

This has opened up new doors for us. There are transitions happening away from, you know, supply chains that may be considered much higher risk. That's been one source. The second piece is, I'll call it more complementary, where either one of those guys is not sourcing, but now evaluating Apollo because of the range. We do really well at seeing far ahead, even as you mentioned, you need to do that for heavy vehicles because they have a longer braking distance.

In some cases it's complementing their existing lidar solution. You know, trucks a big object that has to worry about lots of different situations, not just driving down the highway, but maybe pulling off on the shoulder and then having to pull back on safely. One of the learnings we see coming out of that space is they need more coverage from lidar.

That's been helping us as well.

I have one thing to add to that, Casey.

Oh, yeah. Please, go ahead.

I would just say, look, the natural conclusion is this is an L4 opportunity, but there has been some interest on the L2 side. You know, obviously that's a more cost competitive market, but we've seen a certain amount of interest there as well. It's, you're talking about L4 and L2 potentially as well.

Got it. You know, not to beat a dead horse here, but in many truck deployments or, you know, sort of architectures, there's kind of a long range sensor and a short range sensor. It sounds like you guys might be able to fulfill both those needs with your product portfolio.

Yeah. I'd say one thing that we really have going for us is the tunability of the sensor itself, the fact that it's customizable.

What customers really like is the fact that we can do both long range and short range. Obviously, when you're on a highway, long range is paramount. It's critical, right? That you have the braking distance. Sometimes, right, in urban environments, you need a wider field of view, right? You're maybe looking 100 m down the road.

The fact that we could have multi scan patterns embedded on the device and you could toggle back between different modes is really a game changer. I don't think there's anybody out in the market that can offer that level of customization. That's something that appeals a lot to the customers that we speak with.

Yeah. Okay. Terrific. Yeah, that's a very exciting you know.

The point I'm trying to make here is [crosstalk].

Yeah, sorry, Casey. I guess the point I'm trying to make here is we don't necessarily have to do a hardware change. That's certainly something we could do, but we can solve [crosstalk] the problem through software. Yeah.

Yeah. Which, that's sort of the good answer is that basically you guys can sort of address, you know, sort of a one-stop shop essentially for a customer.

Yeah.

Okay. Jumping over to automotive, it's exciting to hear that people at least are thinking about L3 and L4, you know, offerings at some point. Do you see lidar being consumed as part of sort of driver safety packages still, or are you hearing and meeting customers who are talking about offering some sort of vehicle with L4 autonomy and sort of offering autonomy as a feature versus say just, you know, super good driver safety tools and safety packages?

It's a mix of both.

I think you'll see that, you know, again, I had mentioned earlier about the L4 trucking space, that there's been a lot of capital going in. Now you're seeing these partnerships with Uber, for example, will leverage some of those technology providers, to bring capability outside of trucking into, you know, say robotaxis or other markets.

We're definitely seeing a catalyst there. I think there have been a number of OEMs out there that talked about what they call hands-off, eyes-off driving. Maybe we consider that more into the L3 range. I have to really call out that the concern about supply chain resiliency has really, you know, brought a number of customers to our front door because of, you know, concerns and risk in that area, certainly in the Level 3 space. Also a little bit of L2 and Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, as Conor had mentioned, to solve some corner conditions that currently aren't efficiently covered by like ultrasounds and, you know, panoramic cameras. It's a mix of all three.

The sweet spot's definitely in the L3 side, eyes-off, hands-off, you know, you've got all three in the mix.

Yeah. Okay. That's very exciting. I'm happy to hear about that. I mean, certainly you're right, kind of the new slope around robotaxi and L4 from a whole bunch of providers is certainly ramped up quite a bit. In defense and specifically in drones, I think there's an issue around It's not an issue, a topic around the weight of a lidar sensor. I wonder if you could just talk about the weight of your solutions and if, you know, there's like a roadmap to make it, you know, a certain model lighter or sort of where you guys sit on that weight front in terms of consideration for potentially all defense applications, but primarily drones, obviously.

Yeah. We're really light, and we fit into that envelope quite well. I'm not sure if we published the specs on that.

We're definitely at the low end of the spectrum on weight. Also keep in mind that the kind of drones that you and I may sort of be directly exposed to may not be the kind of drones, necessarily where, you know, you need long-range lidar. For example, drones that travel at very high speeds, so I'm talking about over 200 mph.

Because they're at that kind of speed, they need to see a 1 km out or a 1.5 km out.

They're not the, you know, the drones that Amazon uses to drop off packages. They're much more sophisticated, you know, surveillance and other type of drones. We're absolutely fine in those, and we're light enough to be considered for stronger drones as well. The other hot topic that's cropping up is drone detection.

Being able to assist an intervention system to track when you have an inbound drone, which are, you know, pretty small. Those kind of drones tend to be very small, coming in, and you wanna get them while they're very far out. That's again where the defense primes are coming to us because of the long range that we have.

Okay. Good. Well, that's very, very exciting actually. Just one last little, smaller sort of, I guess it's not technical question, but, you guys have talked about a $30 million, you know, contract opportunity over some longer period of time. I just wonder if that customer pulled some units or was part of the commercial count in 1Q and/or if you expect them to be part of Q2?

Yeah. They're certainly in that count number, so the 20 new customers for sure.

What I would say is that customer itself is probably not going to be a meaningful contributor to revenue this year. I think the revenue is probably a little bit further out in time. [crosstalk] That said, what I would say is since we have made that announcement, it was almost over a year ago now, there's been more customers that have come into the mix and more customers that have moved pretty quickly through that POC phase. What we're seeing now is probably more nearer term opportunities with other customers.

That's probably what's gonna really drive revenue potential for this year.

Yeah. Okay. Terrific. This is really a super, very good encouraging update, and I appreciate the time and, look forward to more as we go through the year. Thank you.

All right. Thanks, Casey.

Take care, Casey. Thank you.

Your next question comes from Richard Shannon of Craig-Hallum. Please go ahead.

Well, great. Thanks, Matt and Connor, for taking my questions. Jumped on a little late, so I may have missed some of the prepared remarks here, so I hope I don't repeat some past questions here. I did want to touch on one of the key themes here of the press release here today about engagement in the automotive side here, particularly with OEMs that are reengaging on L4 and L3 roadmaps here. Would love to get some dynamics and understanding of those dynamics going on here, and maybe you can elaborate on how many RFIs and how fast you think they'll move to RFQ in later stages.

Yeah. Let me start with this, I think Conor will probably follow on here. What I had mentioned earlier, Richard, this did come up in the Q&A, which is what is driving some of this increase in attention? I think it's two pieces. Mainly one is that you see a lot of funding coming into tech providers that they have to deal with Uber, for example. There's quite a few of them that are driving increased interest and velocity in L4 robotaxis. That's one part of it.

The other is, we see definitely a growing concern over supply chain resilience and taking risks in those areas, and that's, you know, shifted business, shall we say, as those, you know, passenger vehicle OEMs start, you know, waking up and their L3 programs are coming online. You know, those are the key drivers. I think we said earlier in the script, the number of RFIs coming in has definitely increased. And, you know, we've got out of the business of predicting OEM schedules, because they're, you know, some of these have come and gone. And, you know, we're just gonna keep an eye on it.

Quite honestly, we're not, you know, we've got enough in our manufacturing pipeline and readiness to hit the switch and get going with the device production when that time comes. We'll expect a little bit of heads-up on this, but our lead times and our risk buys are lined up, you know, with any earliest possible timeline that we can imagine. We don't know. It's been very unpredictable, quite honestly.

The only thing I'd add to Matt's is just the fact that we can go in-cabin behind the glass, right? That seems to be a big value prop for the OEMs, obviously the aesthetics of being able to do that and then have the windshield basically as a way to, you know, protect the sensor itself and obviously clean it. That's a really interesting value prop for the OEMs and something that certainly differentiates us.

Yeah. Two other things, Richard. One is, you know, what activity is happening today. Is data collection a big part of integration of lidar? Is training the AI and integrating to the software? That's what's been unpredictable in terms of conclusion of those activities. Secondly, you know, we just came through a major supply chain audit in the last six months and really digging in some cases, down to glass and sand, where raw materials and intermediate components are coming from, just to make sure that they have options on the supply chain side. We've been very busy with those two activities of late.

Okay. Great, great detail there, guys. Thank you. Second one is just on the general customer engagement here. Glad to see the customer count moving up nicely here from, I think 16-21 here. I'd ask us roughly the same question a couple different ways here, one of which is just on the customer count, if you can elaborate and describe which end markets the incremental five have come from here. Where would you describe where, you know, where the, the biggest, you know, dynamics around engagement have been going that are filling the early part of the pipeline here as well?

Yeah. I mean, I think if you could probably do the math, but the, if you take those new five, they're pretty much spread evenly across all the market segments we mentioned during the prepared remarks. I'm gonna take a look at Conor here for the second part of the question.

I mean, look, I, I think defense obviously, as Matt mentioned, is a big driver, and we're seeing a lot of interest. It's not just in the defense sector. I would say it's also in the commercial aviation space as well. We have some customers in that particular vertical as well. I think the unifying factor is high performance, range, resolution, then obviously the ability to tune the scan pattern. I think what's interesting is even in the defense sector, customers have different needs, different use cases. This is really where the tunability of the sensor, the ability to customize the scan pattern becomes really important.

Even in some cases, for even just one use case, there might be different variants or different kind of performance factors that the customer is trying to solve for. It could be long range, even shorter range, increasing the frame rate. The ability to just dial up, dial down the sensor is really important. I think that, you know, when we're chatting with customers and we're chatting with investors, you know, one thing that we really try and guide people on is, you know, when you look at our sensor, think about it as a performance bucket, and you can kind of basically, you know, adapt that performance bucket to what you want to achieve, right? If that means going longer range, you can put the performance there. If it means higher frame rate, you can do that.

We're giving that level of customization that you otherwise can't get in the marketplace.

Okay. Probably my last question here is on OPTIS. You probably just mentioned this live in an active California intersection. I think I saw something on maybe your LinkedIn page not too long ago, which is great to see, which is a good excuse for me to ask you about general maturity and kind of breadth of engagement pipeline with OPTIS here. Where are you seeing this in terms of application set and geographies would be a great update. Thank you.

Yeah, again, I think it covers a fair part of our market segments. In the remarks, you know, we talked about we're seeing a growing number of customers. The trend is definitely we're looking for a partner in perception and sensing and data analytics that's becoming a bigger part of our pipeline. The examples that we pointed out, for example, with the traffic intersection, we also mentioned the completion of a POC out in Australia with we call it smart, or intelligent traffic systems, where we're tracking for a fleet management company trucks going in and out of way stations and payloads and things like this. Again, we're seeing as we're talking with those customers, they don't know a lot about lidar.

They just came to us and said, "Well, we tried working with an integrator that does cameras and radar, and it doesn't work. Can you help us make it work?" We're seeing more and more of those type of customers where their level of sophistication and knowledge of the underlying sensor piece isn't quite there. They just want help to get an end-to-end solution. It's a growing part of that number that's increasing. Maturity, we've been out in the wild for almost one year now on that second example and, you know, a few months on the first one. We're gonna see more intersections going online this year. I think things are maturing nicely, and you can definitely expect to see a higher percentage of those end-to-end solutions coming in the back half of the year here.

Just one thing to add. You know, I think what makes us unique in the ITS space, especially when it comes to intersections, one thing we're learning is there's a dilemma zone, and that's, you know, maybe looking back 100 m from the stop bar. The fact that we have the range and capabilities to do that is a differentiating feature in the solution that we're offering. That's something definitely getting positive feedback from the DOTs. It's something that nobody else can do right now. That's a classic case where we built a solution, and we're leaning into our capabilities and performance factors.

Hearing increasingly the narrative is, yeah, the other sensors just couldn't see far enough.

Yeah.

Really that simple.

I think customers are going beyond. They're looking more towards next gen lidar solutions, high-performance solutions that can give them that level of range and customization that they need

Makes a lot of sense. Last quick question, Conor, since I didn't hear you're prepared just wanted to make sure that or ask whether you're still using the same language used along the last earnings call about seeing an acceleration in the second half of the year. Is that still your thought process there? Thank you.

Yeah, for sure. Look, I think we're definitely gonna see an inflection in the revenue. I think we're already seeing, you know, more units in the pipeline here for Q2, and we think that trend's gonna continue on into Q3 and Q4. I think all in all, yeah, we're still guiding to that narrative.

Okay. Perfect. That's all for me, guys. Thank you.

Thanks, Richard.

If you would like to ask a question, please press star key then number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star key then number one again. We will pause for a minute for the questions to come in.

Hey, operator, I think it's okay. We can wrap it up if there's nothing else.

That will conclude our question and answer session. I will now turn the call back over to Matt Fisch for closing remarks.

Hey, thank you all for your time today and for your continued interest in AEye. Remain focused on executing against our commercial pipeline and converting this momentum into a durable revenue ramp. We look forward to updating you on our progress next quarter. Thank you.

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

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. My name is Desiree, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the AEye, Inc. fourth quarter 2025 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star then 1 again. I would now like to turn the conference over to Keaton Olson, Investor Relations Manager. You may begin.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining AEye, Inc.'s fourth quarter 2025 earnings call. I am Keaton Olson, Investor Relations Manager for AEye, Inc. And with me today are Matt Fisch, Chief Executive Officer, and Conor Tierney, Chief Financial Officer. Earlier today, AEye, Inc. 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 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, Inc. 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. AEye, Inc. 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 a substitute for financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. You can find reconciliations of these metrics to the most directly comparable GAAP measures within the press release. I will now turn the call over to Matt.

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, Inc. 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 progress 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 evaluations. 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 in our business accelerating each quarter, throughout the year, we made continuous progress against our growth strategy, including launching multiple products: Optus, our fully integrated physical AI solution, and Stratos, that firmly sets 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 built a financial foundation that offers the long-term stability that partners in our sector look for. We believe AEye, Inc. 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, Inc. has emerged from this period with a stronger balance sheet, a capital-light operating model, and a growing commercial pipeline. Our Apollo sensor with near-infinite software programmability and a 1-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 higher-volume programs. In defense and aviation, we are now engaged across multiple opportunities, including repeat business with an existing defense customer. We are also supporting programs in UGV, UAV, and counter-detection applications, where our long-range performance and ability to tune scan patterns in software are particularly valuable. We have seen this momentum translate into concrete activity. We have 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 have 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 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 2026. We recently completed a successful Intelligent Transportation System POC in Australia and are now discussing commercial terms. Multiple smart intersection deployments are in progress across the U.S., and we also signed an LOI with an ITS solutions 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 non-automotive 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 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 markets. The physical AI market is estimated to represent a $5 billion market today and, according to a recent analysis by Barclays, a potential trillion-dollar opportunity by 2035. AEye, Inc.'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 sensor, sets the tone with its unprecedented detection range at a disruptive price point. Stratos is not merely an 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-performance sensing while maintaining a form factor automotive OEMs can fit 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 sensors. Apollo and Stratos are built around a 1550-nanometer architecture which allows higher power transmission while remaining eye safe. The result is improved long-range detection and more reliable classification of low reflectivity objects at distance—capabilities that are increasingly important for applications such as highway autonomy, industrial automation, and defense. Through our global tier-one manufacturing partner, Lite-On, 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 policy. 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 customers. Our partnership with NVIDIA remains a cornerstone of 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 vehicles. This helps ensure compatibility with leading autonomous compute platforms and meets rigorous standards and transparency with regard to sensor performance. I am 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 requirements of the automotive industry. Beyond automotive, our Optus 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 like FlashEye for ITS, airport security, and other applications; BlueBand for smart city traffic management; Black Sesame Technology for high-speed rail; and, most recently, VuRun for dynamic perception required by moving vehicles such as rail and truck. Together, these partnerships are turning technological opportunity into actionable revenue pipelines today. I will now turn the call over to Conor Tierney, who will review our fourth quarter results and our uniquely strong capital position in the performance LiDAR sector.

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 active quotes are up more than 30% 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 2025, primarily due to increased engineering spend and one-time 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 2025. The decrease was primarily due to smaller changes in 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 one-time payroll costs. Excluding net financing proceeds, fourth quarter cash burn increased to $7.5 million from $6.4 million in 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-one 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 marketable 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, Inc. 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 evaluation 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 performance, field of view, and feature sets without requiring a 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 and software definability 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 and software-defined flexibility continue to deepen engagements across markets, while our capital-light model and cost-competitive tech stack allow 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.

Thank you, Conor. As we enter 2026, we believe AEye, Inc. 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 deployments and building a 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.

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star then 1 on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star then 1 again. If you are called upon to ask your question and are listening via speakerphone on your device, please pick up your handset to ensure that your phone is not on mute when asking your question. Again, press star then 1 to join the queue. First comes from the line of Poe Fratt with Alliance Global Partners. Your line is open.

Yeah. Good afternoon, Matt. Good afternoon, Conor. Hey, can you just talk about the big jump in your customer base this quarter? I think you mentioned it jumped to 16, and can you give me any more detail on your pipeline, if you will? You are talking about a lot more engagement. If you can give us a little more color on that, that would be helpful.

Hey, thanks, Po. This is Matt, and I will take that, and happy 2026 to you. Thank you for joining us. I hope you got a strong impression from the script earlier that there is a lot going on at the company right now, and the 16 active customer number that we talked about is really reflective of our growing activity and growing business opportunity in our non-automotive pipeline. If you take that 16 and now you start looking back upstream, we really saw a sizable jump not just in 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. We have a lot more in the pipe coming behind these. By the way, across all the market segments we mentioned in the call, the interest is very broad across the market segments. And so, what we can expect to see going forward is a corresponding jump in the number of customers—in other words, the number of paid POC projects.

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

Yeah. So, first and foremost, I think you saw the press release earlier. Our relationship with NVIDIA continues to deepen, and there were two things that we spoke about in the call earlier. Number one, let us 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 DRIVE AGX Thor platform. That platform is their latest and greatest autonomous platform for ADAS and autonomous driving, and we are out there on the cutting edge showing that with Apollo. And secondly, there was an announcement earlier: we have joined the HALOS AI Lab with NVIDIA. I think the way to look at this is it shows NVIDIA's interest in our strength and our commitment to the automotive process. There is an unbelievable amount of rigor—functional safety and all these kinds of things—and this partnership deepening with NVIDIA with HALOS really increases our momentum and our commitment to the quality, safety, and readiness that are required. Certainly, in our opinion, it shows NVIDIA's continued broadening interest in Apollo and the products we have here at AEye, Inc.

Okay. And then you said you were at CES. Can you talk about any pull-through that you see from being at that conference?

It was incredibly positive for us, Po. 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. There were two or three days 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 am talking about automotive OEMs and also, in particular, trucking OEMs. Even though they may not have had large booths 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 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 were approached by the leaders of these organizations who were really asking about readiness for mass manufacturability. And I think this is where our partnership at Lite-On really struck a positive chord. In fact, we had our partner Lite-On there at the conference, and we felt that the OEMs were really impressed by our approach—using a seasoned tier-one automotive supplier to supply into this market—and it really helped increase our credibility.

I would just add to what Matt said there. 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, they are maturing into evaluations. So this is feeding directly into our funnel and actually feeding downstream in terms of POC momentum. I think that was a great outcome all in all.

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

Yeah. Sure. We will have Conor jump in on that one.

It is a great question. What I would say is we are well capitalized at this point. You mentioned the fact that we had about $87 million in cash, and that really gives us enough runway well into 2028, assuming we maintain a similar burn rate to what is projected in 2026. What I would say is the question is not really when we will raise capital; it is more about strategic optionality. And what I mean by that is we are really pushing commercial traction this year. We have 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 out evaluating opportunities for growth, and if that is in the company’s best interest and delivers shareholder value, then that is something that we may consider.

Great. That is helpful. Thank you, both Matt and Conor.

Thanks, Po.

Our next question comes from the line of Greg Musnier with Kingswood Capital Partners. Your line is open.

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

Over to you, Conor.

We have not given specific guidance on that, Greg. What I would say, it should be relatively low—probably under the $1 million range. So not a huge amount, and that is purely because of our business model, this capital-light business model. We are working with our contract manufacturer and their tier-one partner, Lite-On, so they really do bear the brunt of a lot of that heavy capital investment. That is one of the upsides of our business model.

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

That is for you as well, Conor. Thanks.

What I would say is we are probably predominantly hardware-based right now because this is really about selling sensors. We have started to shift into the software piece with Optus, and that is where we think we can add a lot of value going forward, and we are starting to see some revenue there. But I would say the vast majority of it is still hardware revenue. One thing that I am really enthusiastic about is, because of the software definability of the sensor and the flexibility, what we are seeing is there are opportunities to upsell for customization. This could be working with—we will take the defense industry as an example—upselling on customizations to enhance range or to enhance certain feature sets. There is a lot of flexibility there. I think we are really just scratching the surface in terms of the revenue-generating opportunities there.

Thank you. I have no other questions.

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

Well, hi, Matt and Conor. Thanks for letting me ask a couple of questions here. Apologies—jumped on the call a little late here. The flight was delayed here today. I think there was an earlier question that I sort of missed the answer on that, so I hope this is not a repeat. But your announcement today, coincident with the earnings, about the partnership with NVIDIA and this HALOS ecosystem—would love to understand what application or application sets this is addressing. How does it overlap or extend what you have been doing with NVIDIA to date? And I know at points in the past you talked about NVIDIA’s Hyperion platform. Is this any relationship to that as well?

Thanks, Richard. Just a quick recap from earlier: this is a deepening and broadening of the relationship with NVIDIA. Specifically, it is targeted at the automotive space. One of the things we are collaborating with NVIDIA on through HALOS is increasing—or bolstering—our commitment to robustness, functional safety, resiliency, and reliability in the automotive space. So yes, it is really positioned under the broader umbrella of Hyperion, and it is yet another box checked on the level of rigor that is required to be ready for automotive shipments.

Okay. Thanks for that. I guess my second question is—I cannot remember which one of you made the comment in the prepared remarks—but your nice win you talked about last summer, the $30 million global transport win, you talked about a pickup in the second half of the year. I would love to get a sense of what that really means, if you have any way you can quantify what kind of magnitude we are talking about. And then, ultimately, do you see the $30 million eventually being realized within that three-year time frame that I think you are expecting?

Yes. I am going to start this one off, and I will hand the quantitative piece over to Conor. As you well know, it is not a commodity off-the-shelf technology, and it just takes time for an OEM in this space to properly test and evaluate. As they gain more confidence in their use case, they will do broader and broader deployments. It builds over time. That is why the process is stretched out over two to three years here, which really has to do with the newness of the technology and the need for the OEM to start in a modest way and then expand their deployments over time. Conor, why do you not comment on a little more detail on the quantitative part of it? Are you there, Conor?

For what it is worth, I do not hear him on here. Do you hear him, Matt?

No. I can hear you, Richard. Again, why do I not pick it up, and if we get Conor back—But, look, the short answer is—

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

Okay. Perfect. I will ask one more question and jump out of the line here. Regarding both Optus and Stratos—I am going to ask a two-part question. The first part is backward-looking, and the second part is forward-looking. In terms of backward-looking, were any of the customers that you gained—the 16 you mentioned—related to Optus and Stratos in 2025? And then how should we think about milestones or the number of customers you might be expected to gain in 2026 from both Optus and Stratos? I would be particularly interested in Stratos given what looked like some great performance metrics—love to hear some comments on both. Thank you.

Sure. I think Conor touched on this a little bit earlier. Let us hit Optus first. The numbers we talked about earlier absolutely include Optus numbers. As Conor mentioned earlier, we have a modest portion of the revenue driven by software today, but we do expect that to grow over time. On the Stratos side, it is definitely also baked into what we talked about earlier in terms of active customers and POCs. I will say a little bit more about it. If you think about those really high-speed applications that you might see in defense, or you are attached to a vehicle that is moving very quickly, and also something like a locomotive or a long train that carries a lot of weight and needs extreme stopping distance, I would say those are most definitely related to our inspiration to build a product like Stratos. I would expect it to be expanding later this year and into next year as well, but we will let Conor comment on any specifics.

I think that is correct. We only truly launched Stratos in January, so we are still at the early stages of the opportunities there. What I would say is most of the sales in 2025 were driven by Apollo and Optus. The opportunities were pretty broad. They were a mix of defense-related opportunities and ITS applications, so a wide variety of sectors, including rail, as Matt mentioned. What we are really seeing is some common denominators there. Range is obviously critical, but the software definability piece is really resonating. In some sectors, that is a must-have—the flexibility to be able to tune and change scan patterns. It really gives us an edge on legacy sensing modalities such as radar and camera and even traditional fixed LiDAR-type scanners. We are very enthusiastic coming into 2026 now that we have Stratos in the portfolio as well. That is going to open up a lot of other opportunities for us too.

Okay. Perfect. That is all for me, guys. Thank you.

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

Thank you. Hi, Matt, Conor. Great update. I was hoping to go back to the future a little bit and just wonder if you would comment a little bit about automotive. I think we are hearing there is some reset in the thinking about LiDAR and automotive, with L3 plans being recast. Do you see that benefiting you as those solutions are rethought at a lot of the major OEMs?

Sure. Happy to take that one, Casey. Good to hear from you again. I will start with CES this year, and that kind of bleeds into Q4 as well. The OEM guys are back. If anything, the interest level we are seeing has jumped. Over the last few months, we have seen two RFIs inbound in that space. If anything, activity has increased. We are not fully dependent or solely dependent on the automotive industry—we are diversifying nicely—but I would say the interest and engagement levels have gone up over the last few months. The thing that I really like about it is, as we are having these conversations, those OEMs are leading with, “We are thinking about getting more serious and going more broadly—do you really have the manufacturing chops to deliver in mass production?” This is where our relationship with Lite-On has really paid dividends in those conversations. I would say interest level up.

Terrific. And then one second question on automotive. Do you see L3, L4, L5 roadmaps across both propulsion types? It feels like a lot of the early ADAS stuff was done on EV platforms, but there is no tech reason why they cannot be done on ICE vehicles as well. Have you seen that proposed for both types of vehicles moving forward?

In general, we do not have that level of visibility necessarily. This is sensitive OEM roadmap stuff, but the technology is surely agnostic—that much we know. To your question about L3 and L4, in the OEM piece it is a lot about L3, and then we have seen coming out of the trucking space from CES especially a lot of interest in the L4 space, but the technology is agnostic.

Okay. Great. And then, with this new long-range product, are there opportunities—especially in trucking or, as you mentioned, train and rail—where you have made some traction on the short range and now, prior to having a long-range sensor, maybe they were using someone else, but maybe you are getting two opportunities instead of one?

It is great that you mentioned that. I will give you an example from a conversation that came out at CES. As the trucking guys are getting out there on the road and getting some miles under their belt, they are finding new use cases that are being exposed. For example, you have a truck that is pulling off on the side of the freeway. It has to merge safely back into traffic, and that involves looking backwards and to the side. That is where we are seeing a demand for a medium-range LiDAR that became known to us at CES through this trucking OEM visit. Apollo was a really good fit for those medium-range applications. So, definitely interest there in the Apollo solution for things like that.

Okay. Terrific. And then just the last question, because I know we have covered a lot of the financial questions. What are your thoughts about others in the LiDAR space now combining cameras into their solutions and potentially setting themselves up to integrate multiple sensors? What are your thoughts about the product roadmap? Does that matter? Is that people future-proofing, or is that not that important today in today’s market? You are making great progress.

One of the things we are seeing with our pipeline growth is the new use cases that LiDAR is enabling. We are focused on building great LiDAR and LiDAR that is really easy to integrate. As you know, in the case of Optus, for those customers who cannot build their own AI layer, that integrates very simply and easily. For us, it is about the magic that LiDAR unlocks in terms of new use cases and new levels of perception that camera does not provide today, and we are incredibly busy with that alone.

Okay. Terrific. Thank you. That is it for my questions. That is a fantastic update today. Thanks.

Thanks, Casey.

See you, Casey. Thank you.

And again, if you would like to ask a question, press star then the number 1. There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call over to Matt Fisch for closing remarks.

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

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