Earnings Call
AEye, Inc. (LIDR)
Earnings Call Transcript - LIDR Q1 FY2026
Operator
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 AI's first 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.
Keaton Olson, Head of Investor Relations
Good afternoon, and thank you for joining AI's first quarter 2026 earnings call. I'm T. Nolson, Investor Relations Manager for AI, and with me today are Matt Fish, Chief Executive Officer, and Connor Tierney, Chief Financial Officer. Earlier today, AI announced its financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 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 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 AI files for time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including in a most recent periodic report. The statements to be made are as of today only, and AI 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
Matt Fisch, CEO
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, and a commercial pipeline that continued to grow. Our ecosystem partnerships and manufacturing capability remained 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 to 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. However, these leading indicators, new technical engagements, inbound RFIs, and POC activity across automotive, trucking, defense, rail, infrastructure, and ITS 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. AI'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 should reach as much as $1 trillion by 2035, and LiDAR is the enabling layer that makes it real. AI'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. AI 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 a windshield and is the only sensor we know of to be customer-proven to reliably detect objects at distances of up to one kilometer. Our OEM engagement has increased, driven by recent robo-tax fee investment announcements, growing trade policy implications, and supply chain resilience concerns. With OEMs in the passenger vehicle segment actively seeking domestically sourced alternatives, AI'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 re-engage 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, Optus is now live at an active intersection in California, in partnership with FlashEye and BlueBand. 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 ATI 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 UAV wire detection. Repeat business is emerging within that account, and Apollo is being evaluated for additional applications, including UGV and counter-UAV, with an expectation of multiple new RFQs. A significant development this quarter is our new commercial relationship with Syntec, a global defense systems company with established ties to beating defense primes. Syntec 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's proven and reliable one-kilometer detection range with unlimited software-driven adjustability. That flexibility is paying dividends. For example, a defense customer that initially engaged us for a single UAD 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 AI. Stratos, the newest addition to our product lineup extends our capability up to 1.5 kilometers of detection range with 500 meter performance behind a windshield at a disruptive price point. Through our manufacturing partnership with Lighton, AI 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 Oren and has been demonstrated on Drive AGX 4, 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 confidence, reliability, and quality assurance within their supply chain. Our Optus platform, powered by NVIDIA, Jetson, Oren, 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 Connor to review our first quarter result.
Conor Tierney, CFO
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 RFI 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, and it is exactly the model AI 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. And 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 2-1-2025, and up slightly versus 2-4-2025. First quarter GAAP operating expenses were $8.9 million compared to $8.3 million in 2-4-2025. 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 2-4-2025. First quarter cash burn was $9.2 million, up from $7.5 million in 2-4-2025, 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, cash equivalents, and marketable securities of approximately $77.2 million, compared to $86.5 million at the end of 2-4-2025. 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 to $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.
Speaker 6
On a brief housekeeping note, while we are discussing capital, in the days immediately
Conor Tierney, CFO
following this call, AI plans to file a new shelf registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Our existing shelf is expiring, and this filing is a routine replacement, standard course of business. Our strategy has not changed, our capital framework has not changed, and 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 AI virtually debt-free. That matters directly to the OEMs and industrial customers we are targeting. For most of your program, confidence is a prerequisite for selection. And the architectural point Matt made earlier compounds here. The same software-defined platform that lets us tune Apollo to a customer-specific frame rate, range, and field of view is what lets us extend our accessible markets without rebuilding from the ground up each time.
Speaker 6
Stratus makes that Compounding Advantage Concrete, a third-generation sensor that reaches
Conor Tierney, CFO
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 extending 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 section. I will now hand it back to Matt for closing remarks.
Matt Fisch, CEO
Thank you, Connor. 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, and the partnerships we have built, from NVIDIA to LightOn to Syntec 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.
Operator
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 OFRAC.
Speaker 3
Hey, can you just update us on the collaboration and partnership with NVIDIA, and then maybe give us a couple of milestones that we should be looking for over the rest of the year on furthering that partnership?
Matt Fisch, CEO
Hey, welcome back, Beau. 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, AGX4, 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're testing. They start at lunchtime. They're not leaving there until midnight, testing the latest Apollo software update. And really, it's about validation, the horsepower and the technology that NVIDIA brings to the table. They're so prolific with their platform and the automotive industry. What this is about is validating our capabilities and performance to be ready for that OEM integration phase. And if you check the NVIDIA ecosystem website today, we're at the top of the list. Our performance is validated, and we're the top performer on that list today. So look what we can 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 AGX Drive 4, and that's going to be our focus. And, 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, and be ready for that OEM integration.
Speaker 3
on their platform. Great. That's helpful. And then 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? And then maybe, Matt, if you could highlight, you know, which markets have the short of selling time versus other markets?
Matt Fisch, CEO
Sure, absolutely. Thanks, Bob. Great question. Look, we're super excited. We're basically at the highest level of commercial engagement we've ever had in this company. And I will tell you, we've added in that 31% growth customers in every one of those six market segments that Connor talked about earlier. So 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.
Speaker 8
One is defense.
Matt Fisch, CEO
That's a real major standout. 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 AI's Apollo solution. and 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 point out the evidence we talked about in the earnings call. And 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. And 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. So 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. But look, in other areas as well, we're now, you know, we have our Optus. This is our full perception solution. Connor talked about this earlier. It's not just about the sensor. It's about being able to collect data and then act. And we have our Optus solution up on a traffic intersection in the Bay Area today, demonstrating that end-to-end capability. There will be more to come in that space for sure. And we also just completed in the intelligent traffic system space, a POC in Australia, where they were trying to count trucks and delays and trucking and parking lots and managed fleet capacity. And they tried to do it with camera and radar, and they couldn't make it work, and we've got them up and running now. The end customer has seen it, and they're very happy with it. So, look, it's about, number one, customers are coming to us for that industry-leading detection range, one kilometer for Apollo and 1.5 kilometers for Stratus. And then, secondly, that software-defined element of our product now only allows us to scale across market segments, but it also is scaling within customers. And I think those two attraction and differentiation points are really propelling us forward here.
Speaker 6
Yeah, I think, Poe, you also brought up the question about lead times. And what we would see is probably two distinct patterns there. Certainly on the automotive side, we're seeing longer lead times. It could take maybe two to three years to get to SOP. But on non-automotive, that timeline is certainly accelerated. That said, we're still seeing at least six to 12 months. Now, it can vary between customers. Some customers, some sectors move quicker, other moves slower. It all depends on the end customer and what their goals and priorities are.
Matt Fisch, CEO
Yeah, I just, hey, probably forgot to mention Syntec as well, another commercial partner we've added this quarter, just further highlighting the expansion across multiple players in the defense.
Speaker 3
Great. Are you in discussions with any additional partners, Matt? Should we see an expansion like, say, the defense industry is huge? Are there others out there that you're looking at partnering with?
Matt Fisch, CEO
Yeah, absolutely. I count that on two fronts. 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. So that's just a leading indicator to entering the POC phase. absolutely across all of those segments and then the second piece is let's talk about optics this is where we have four partners today and 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. It makes it very easy for developers to work with it. And even more importantly, as Conrad pointed out, in the finance section
Speaker 8
is we're not constrained by what software we develop in-house. We've got these four
Matt Fisch, CEO
guys that enable us to jump into these multiple market segments very quickly. And throughout the rest of the year, I think you can look forward to expansion of those number of software
Speaker 3
partnerships. Very helpful. Thanks, Matt. Thanks, Connor. Thanks, Bill. Your next question
Operator
comes from the line of Casey Ryan of AmerX. Please go ahead. Matt, Connor, good afternoon.
Speaker 8
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 so with those opportunities in trucking are they um would they ever be displacing internal lidar production or 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
Matt Fisch, CEO
opportunity with some of the truck possibilities hey casey thanks and welcome aboard your new assignment here we appreciate the coverage thank you for that look it's it is true we talked in the script about Apollo sensors now an evaluation with multiple L4 trucking players and I think this has been further catalyzed by 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, and 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. and the second piece is I'll call it more complimentary where either one of those guys is sourcing not sourcing but now evaluating Apollo because of the range I would do really well it seemed far ahead as you mentioned you need to do that for heavy vehicles could have a longer braking distance and in some cases it's complementing their existing lighter 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. And one of the warnings we see coming out of that space is they need more coverage from WIDER, and that's been helping.
Speaker 6
I would just say, look, the natural conclusion is this is an L4 opportunity, but there has been some interest on the L2 site. Obviously, that's a more cost-competitive market, but we've seen a certain amount of, you're talking about L4 and L2 potentially as well.
Speaker 8
Got it. And then, 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 of those needs with your product portfolio.
Speaker 6
Yeah, 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. And 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. But sometimes, right, in urban environments, you need a wider field of view, right? You're maybe looking 100 meters down the road. So the fact that we could have multi-scan patterns embedded on the device between different modes is really a game changer. And I don't think there's anybody out in the market of customization. And so that's something that appeals a lot to the customers that we speak with.
Speaker 8
Yeah. Okay. Terrific. Yeah. That's a very exciting, you know, something that I think we always, I'm trying to make here is, yeah,
Speaker 6
you get 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 a problem through solve. Yeah.
Speaker 8
Yeah. Which, which that's sort of the good answer is, is that basically you guys can sort of address, you know, sort of a one-stop shop essentially for a customer yeah okay so 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 at 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?
Matt Fisch, CEO
It's a mix of both. And I think you'll see that, you know, again, I had mentioned earlier, talk 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, to leverage some of those technology providers to bring capability outside of trucking into, say, robo-taxis or other markets. We're definitely seeing a catalyst there. And then 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. And again, I have to really call out that the concern about supply chain resiliency has really brought a number of customers to our front door because re-space and also a little bit of L2 and ADAS, as Connor had mentioned, has solved some corner conditions that currently aren't efficiently covered by ultrasonics and panoramic cameras. So it's a mix of all three. The sweet spot's definitely on the L3 side, eyes off, hands off, but you've got all three in the mix.
Speaker 8
Yeah. Okay. That's very exciting. I'm happy to hear about that. And yeah, I mean, certainly you're right. Kind of the new flow around RoboTaxi and L4 from a whole bunch of providers is certainly ramped up quite a bit. um in defense and specifically in drones i think there's an issue around um it's not an issue uh a topic around the weight of a lidar sensor and 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 um front in terms of consideration for potentially all defense applications but primarily drones obviously
Matt Fisch, CEO
Yeah, we're really light, and we fit into that envelope quite well. I'm not sure if we published the specs on that, but 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, instead of talking about over 200 miles per hour. Because they're at that kind of speed, they need to see a kilometer out or a kilometer and a half out. Not the drones that Amazon uses to drop off packages. They're much more sophisticated in surveillance and other type of drones. So 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. And being able to assist an intervention system to track when you have an inbound drone, which are pretty small, those kind of drones tend to be very small coming in and you want to get them while they're very far out. And that's, again, where the defense primes are coming to us because of the long range.
Speaker 8
Okay, good. Well, that's very exciting, actually. And then just one last little smaller sort of, I guess it's not a technical question, but you guys have talked about a $30 million 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 one queue and or if you expect them to be part of Q2.
Speaker 6
Yeah, they're certainly in that count number, so the 21 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. And so that said, what I would say is since we 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. So what we're seeing now is probably more near-term opportunities with other customers, and that's probably what's going to really drive revenue potential for this year.
Speaker 8
Yeah, okay, terrific. Well, 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.
Matt Fisch, CEO
All right, thanks, Casey. Take care, Casey. Thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from Richard Shannon of Craig Hallam. Please go ahead.
Richard Shannon, Analyst — Craig-Hallum
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. But I did want to touch on one of the key themes here of the press release here today about engagement on 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 do you think they'll move to RFQ in later stages?
Matt Fisch, CEO
Yeah, let me start with this, and I think Connor will probably file 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. quite a few of them that are driving increased interest and velocity in level four robo taxis so 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 passenger vehicle OEMs start 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 going to 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-wise are lined up with, you know, any earliest possible timeline that we could imagine. But we just, we don't know. It's been very unpredictable, quite honestly.
Speaker 6
Yeah, the only thing I'd add to that 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. So that's a really interesting value prop for the OEMs and something that certainly differentiates us.
Matt Fisch, CEO
Two other things, Richard. One is, you know, what's activity is happening today. It's data collection. A big part of integration of LiDAR is training the AI and integrating to the software. and that's what's been unpredictable in terms of conclusion of those activities and then secondly we just came through a major supply chain audit in the last six months and really digging in 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
Richard Shannon, Analyst — Craig-Hallum
those two activities okay great uh great detail there guys thank you um second one is just on the General customer engagement here. Glad to see the customer count moving up nicely here from 16 to 21 here. I ask roughly the same question a couple of 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. And then where would you describe where the biggest dynamics around engagement have been going that are filling the early part of the pipeline here?
Matt Fisch, CEO
as well. Yeah, I mean, I think if I would, 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 going to take a look at Connor here for the second part
Speaker 6
of the question. Yeah, I mean, look, I think defense, obviously, as Matt mentioned, is a big driver, and we're seeing a lot of interest, and it's not just in the defense sector. I would say it's also in the commercial aviation space as well. So we have some customers in that particular vertical as well, and I think the unifying factor is high performance, range, resolution, and then obviously the ability to tune the scan pattern. And I think what's interesting is even in the defense sector, customers have different needs, different use cases, and so this is really where the tunability of the sensor, the ability to customize the scan pattern becomes really important. And 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 long range, even shorter range, increasing the frame rate. So the ability to just dial up, dial down the sensor is really important. And I think that when we're chatting with customers and we're chatting with investors, 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 so if that means going longer range you can put the performance there if it means higher frame rate you can do that and so we're giving that level of customization that you otherwise can't get in the market
Richard Shannon, Analyst — Craig-Hallum
probably my last question here is on Optus so 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 about general maturity and kind of breadth of engagement pipeline with Optus here, where you're seeing this in terms of applications set in geography. This would be a great update. Thank you.
Matt Fisch, CEO
Yeah, again, I think it covers a fair part of our market segments. and in the remarks, you know, we talked about we're seeing a growing number of customers. The trend is definitely, hey, 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, the traffic intersection, we also mentioned the completion of a POC within, out in Australia, with we just kind of we call it smart or intelligent traffic systems where we were tracking for fleet management company trucks going in at away stations and payloads and things like this and again we're seeing as we're talking with those customers they don't they don't know a lot about LIDAR they just came to us and said well we tried can we tried working with an integrator that does cameras and radar and it doesn't work can you help us make it work and we're seeing more and more of those type of customers where their level of specification 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're out we've been out in the wild for almost a year now on that second example and you know a few months on the first one we're going to see more intersections going online this year so I think things are maturing nicely and you can definitely expect to see a higher percentage of those end-to-end solutions
Speaker 6
coming in the back half of the year here and I just one thing to add I you know I think there's really 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 meters from the stop bar, and the fact that we have the range and capabilities to do that is a differentiating feature in the solution that we're offering, and that's something definitely getting positive feedback from the DOTs. It's something that nobody else can do right now. So that's a classic case where we've built a solution and we're leaning into our capabilities and performance.
Matt Fisch, CEO
And hearing increasingly the narrative, the other sensors just couldn't see far enough. Really that simple.
Speaker 6
So I think customers are going beyond. And 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.
Richard Shannon, Analyst — Craig-Hallum
Makes a lot of sense. Last quick question, Connor. Since I didn't hear your preparative marches, I wanted to make sure that or ask whether you're still using the same language usual on the last earnings call about seeing an acceleration in the second half of the year. Is that still your thought process there?
Speaker 6
Yeah, for sure.
Conor Tierney, CFO
Look, I think we're definitely going to see an inflection in the revenue.
Speaker 6
I think we're already seeing, you know, more units in the pipeline here for Q2, and we think that trend's going to continue on into Q3 and Q4. So I think all in all, yeah, we're still guiding to that narrative.
Richard Shannon, Analyst — Craig-Hallum
Okay, perfect. That's all from you guys. Thanks, Richard.
Operator
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.
Conor Tierney, CFO
Hey, Operator, I think it's okay.
Matt Fisch, CEO
We can wrap it up if there's nothing else.
Operator
That will conclude our question and answer session. I will now turn the call back over to Matt Fish for closing remarks.
Matt Fisch, CEO
Hey, thank you all for your time today and for your continued interest in AI. Remain focused on executing against our commercial pipeline and converting this momentum into a durable revenue rant. And we look forward to updating you on our progress next quarter. Thank you.
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.