Company: LIDRW
Filing Date: 2025-11-07
Form Type: 10-Q
Source: 0001437749-25-033677
Chunk: 15

Company: AEye, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-11-07
Form: 10-Q
Item: Part I, Item 4
Chunk 15
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 impact on our ability to gain market acceptance for our products, regardless of the ability of our products to achieve the automotive OEMs’ specifications.

Accordingly, we expect to be subject to substantial and continuing pricing pressure from automotive OEMs, Tier 1 suppliers, and lidar competitors, which may impact the revenue we receive from licensing our product designs or selling our products. In particular, because automotive lidar technology appears to have been successfully commercialized in China, our competitors in that market have likely gained experience and efficiencies, including cost efficiencies, that often come with productization that suppliers outside of China, including us, do not have. Although trade barriers may prevent some Chinese lidar suppliers from entering Western lidar markets, to the extent Chinese lidar sensors enter Western markets, competitive pricing pressures on us would likely increase. It is possible that pricing pressures beyond our expectations could intensify as automotive OEMs, Tier 1 suppliers, and lidar competitors pursue restructuring, consolidation, and cost-cutting initiatives. If we are unable to identify sufficient design cost savings to meet the expectations of automotive OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers, our revenue and profitability would be adversely affected.

We expect to continue investing in R&D and commercializing new products, which could significantly reduce our profitability and may never result in revenue to us.

Our future growth depends on penetrating new markets, adapting existing products to new applications and customer requirements, achieving volume-based component price reductions, and introducing new products that achieve market acceptance. We expect to continue to incur R&D costs as part of our efforts to design, develop, manufacture, and commercialize new products and enhance existing products. Our R&D expenses were approximately $10.2 million and $12.1 million during the nine months ended September 30, 2025 and 2024, respectively, and may increase in the future. Because we account for R&D as an operating expense, these expenditures will adversely affect our results of operations in the future. Further, our R&D program may not produce successful results, and our new products may not achieve market acceptance, create additional revenue, or become profitable. 

In July 2025 we introduced OPTIS™, a full-stack physical AI solution for the Non-Automotive market.  For OPTIS™ to be successful it will require that we find and integrate the products of partners who have created compatible perception, analytics, and other relevant software products and are willing to integrate those products onto the OPTIS™ platform.  If we are unable to find software partners that