AEye, Inc. (Nasdaq: LIDR), a global leader in software-defined, high-performance lidar solutions, today issued a letter to stockholders. The full text of the letter follows:
Dear Fellow Stockholders,
In the time since my last letter, AEye has experienced significant progress marked by accelerating commercial momentum and expansion into entirely new markets. Our commercial pipeline again has reached a record level, with more programs advancing from initial evaluations into paid deployments and repeat orders across key verticals. We also are benefiting from greater diversification of demand – spanning aerospace & defense, automotive, trucking, ITS, and now space mobility and sports analytics – as customers continue to validate Apollo™ in real-world conditions.
Key members of the management team and I retain major positions in AEye. Our success, like yours, is aligned with the Company’s – so I am especially pleased to share our most significant recent achievements below:
- Multi-Million-Dollar Contract Secured: Lunar Outpost has entered into a binding, multi-million-dollar financial commitment with AEye, ultimately backed by NASA funding, to deploy Apollo™ on its Pegasus Lunar Terrain Vehicle, which is designed to transport Artemis astronauts across the lunar surface. The lunar environment represents the most demanding proving ground any sensor can face, and this selection again highlights to the market how our robust, software-defined solution creates confidence in scenarios where the sensor must be adjusted for evolving mission parameters, even when it’s been launched into space and cannot be physically accessed.
- New Development Contract in Sports Analytics: Alive3D selected Apollo™ for next-generation sports analytics, extending our software-defined platform into an entirely new commercial category and reinforcing the breadth of applications our architecture can address as we build toward broader adoption.
- Commercial Leadership: We appointed Laura Wrisley as Chief Revenue Officer, bringing more than two decades of commercial leadership in lidar, data transport, and autonomous robots to scale our go-to-market execution and convert our growing pipeline into repeatable revenue.
- Defense Momentum: Defense remains our most active vertical, with engagements doubling quarter-over-quarter. Our lead defense customer placed its third consecutive paid order, and our partnership with SynTech continues to expand Apollo’s™ international reach.
- Automotive and Trucking Progress: We remain active in multiple OEM Level 3 and Level 4 evaluations and signed an MOU with MoveAWheeL to combine Apollo’s™ long-range detection with acoustic road-surface friction sensing, improving ADAS and autonomous performance in adverse weather.
- ITS Deployment: OPTIS™ continues to move into deployment, with our live smart intersection in the Bay Area remaining operational alongside multiple installations in and around Detroit.
- NVIDIA Ecosystem Validation: Apollo™ was validated on NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Thor™, positioning AEye as a sensor partner in the NVIDIA DRIVE Hyperion Ecosystem and reducing integration risk for OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers building on the NVIDIA DRIVE platform.
- Record Commercial Engagement: Commercial activity reached its highest level in Company history, with 25 customers now taking revenue-generating shipments – a 19% increase since Q1 results – and engagements and quotes are up over 25% and approximately 40% quarter-over-quarter, respectively. Revenue grew approximately nine-fold year-over-year and roughly doubled sequentially, marking our fourth consecutive quarter of growth, with first-half 2026 revenue already exceeding full-year 2025.
- Strong Financial Position: We have a substantial cash position and virtually debt free balance sheet, which we believe provides ample resources for the next wave of customer conversions and beyond.
These achievements reflect a broader shift underway in our business: from paid evaluations toward recurring commercial agreements, and from a single revenue source toward multiple, including contract award and contract development revenue. We believe this transition, combined with our expanding pipeline, positions us to convert sustained commercial interest into durable revenue growth.
Looking Ahead
I am proud of how our team continues to convert technology leadership into commercial results, extending Apollo’s™ reach into new verticals while deepening engagement in our core markets. It has been exciting to see Lunar Outpost and Alive3D emerge as our first lead customers from this record pipeline after many months of joint development – this is new technology, and customer integration takes time. You can expect more commercial deals to materialize in the back half of this year, as well as more announcements about key engagements entering the pipeline, positioning us for continued revenue growth in 2027.
AEye sits at the center of the physical AI opportunity, a market Barclays sizes at up to $1 trillion by 2035, and our software-defined architecture allows us to meet the demands of that market without redesigning our hardware for every new application. Looking ahead, our priorities remain clear:
- Converting our record pipeline of engagements and quotes into revenue-generating customer relationships.
- Extending Apollo™, STRATOS™, and OPTIS™ into additional high-value verticals.
- Deepening automotive OEM engagement through Apollo’s™ unique software-defined, behind-the-windshield form factor.
- Scaling production responsibly through our capital-light manufacturing partnership with LITEON.
- Maintaining disciplined financial and operational execution.
AEye’s leadership team and Board remain focused on strategic execution and the long-term success of the Company. We are building a business designed to scale, grounded in our capital-light model, operational discipline, and products that deliver meaningful, real-world impact across an expanding set of industries. This expansion, from defense to sports analytics, validates the same underlying thesis driving every new vertical we enter: when performance and programmability matter most, Apollo™ wins.
Thank you for your continued confidence in AEye, and in our vision of building the sensing platform that powers the physical AI era.
Sincerely,
Matt Fisch
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
About AEye, Inc.
AEye offers a suite of unique software-defined lidar solutions that address a wide range of real-world needs including advanced driver-assistance, vehicle autonomy, smart infrastructure, security, defense, and logistics applications. AEye’s flagship product, Apollo™, has been widely recognized for its small form factor and its ability to detect objects at up to one kilometer. In addition to Apollo™, AEye also offers STRATOS™ with the ability to detect objects at up to one-and-a-half kilometers as well as a full-stack solution through its OPTIS™ platform. OPTIS™ provides a complete system that captures a high-resolution 3D image of the world, interprets it, and provides direction to act upon what it sees in real time.
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