Hesai Group — AI supply-chain exposure

Hesai is the largest lidar maker by shipments, supplying the laser-based perception sensors that let autonomous systems build a three-dimensional picture of the world around them. It sits in the chips/perception-hardware layer of the AI chain as a supplier of robotics-control inputs: its sensors feed ADAS programs, robotaxi fleets, and increasingly general robotics, providing the raw distance-and-depth data that driving and navigation models reason over.

The structural hook is that lidar is one of the physical bottlenecks between an AI model and the real world — perception has to happen before any decision can. As a shipment leader, Hesai captures scale and cost advantages in a market that grows with every autonomous vehicle and mobile robot deployed. Its exposure is therefore tied to the pace of autonomy adoption: it is not building the driving intelligence itself, but it supplies a sensing layer those systems depend on, which is why the model places it as a perception-hardware supplier feeding the robotics side of the chain.