Aeva (AEVA) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Image source: The Motley Fool.

Date

Feb. 26, 2026

Call participants

• Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer — Soroush Salehian
• Chief Financial Officer — Saurabh Sinha
• Senior Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Development — Andrew Fung

Need a quote from a Motley Fool analyst? Email pr@fool.com

Takeaways

• Revenue -- $5.6 million for Q4 and $18.1 million for the full year, reflecting a doubling compared to the prior year due to increased sensor shipments and expansion into more applications.
• Production program award -- Aeva Technologies (NASDAQ:AEVA) secured an exclusive long-term LiDAR supply agreement with a top European passenger OEM, targeting global deployment (excluding China) with standardized Level 3 automation, and a start-of-production planned for 2028.
• Reference platform recognition -- NVIDIA selected Aeva Technologies' 4D LiDAR as its reference sensor for DRIVE Hyperion, positioning the company as the core LiDAR supplier for multiple major OEM deployments outside China.
• Industrial partnerships -- LG Innotek committed up to $50 million (via equity, joint product investment, and capital expenditure) to accelerate Aeva Technologies' entrance into physical AI markets and scale next-generation product manufacturing.
• Defense sector traction -- Aeva Technologies announced its first defense win with Forterra, supplying LiDAR for autonomous military systems, and reported that defense applications accounted for nearly a double-digit percentage of product sales in the last year.
• Operating loss (non-GAAP) -- Q4 non-GAAP operating loss was $23.8 million, reducing to $102 million for the full year, with annual improvement of 17% driven by a 12% reduction in non-GAAP operating expenses.
• Liquidity -- Year-end available liquidity stood at $246.9 million, comprised of $121.9 million in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities, plus $125 million remaining in a fully undrawn facility.
• 2026 revenue guidance -- Management guided for $30 million-$36 million in revenue, implying 70%-100% year-over-year growth, with anticipated revenue variability based on timing of shipments and program ramp.
• Operating expense outlook -- Full-year 2026 non-GAAP operating expenses are expected to be in line with—or up to 10% higher than—2025 levels, demonstrating continued capital and cost discipline.
• Automotive pipeline expansion -- A global top-five passenger OEM selected Aeva Technologies for a new development program centered on the Atlas Ultra sensor, confirming growing industry movement away from time-of-flight toward FMCW LiDAR solutions.
• Manufacturing scale -- The automated final assembly line is complete, expected to provide up to 100,000 systems annual capacity, supporting anticipated commercial wins and scaling customer shipments.

Summary

Aeva Technologies (NASDAQ:AEVA) reported record revenue performance with momentum across automotive, industrial, and defense sectors. The company secured landmark commercial agreements, including an exclusive production supply deal with a leading European automotive OEM for Level 3 automation and official designation as the reference LiDAR sensor for NVIDIA’s global development platform outside China. Management highlighted liquidity strength and capital partnerships to enable manufacturing scale-up and market expansion in both established and emerging end-markets.

• CEO Salehian emphasized the significance of "the first major passenger OEM transitioning from time-of-flight to FMCW" and described this as a catalyst deepening industry engagement.
• CFO Sinha stated, "We had a record revenue quarter and year in 2025," attributing growth to sensor shipments and non-recurring engineering (NRE) revenue from key automotive customers.
• The company noted "sizable shipments" to Forterra, with management projecting defense customers could contribute meaningfully to near-term sales as LiDAR adoption in military and security applications increases.
• The production pipeline now includes major wins spanning passenger, commercial, and non-automotive sectors, with management targeting another four or more commercial wins in 2026.

Industry glossary

• FMCW (Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave): A LiDAR technology variant that encodes both distance and velocity information, enabling high-resolution, interference-resistant automotive perception.
• NRE (Non-Recurring Engineering): Upfront engineering fees received for custom design, prototyping, or software integrations with specific customer programs.
• Atlas Ultra: Aeva Technologies' advanced automotive LiDAR sensor platform optimized for global top-tier OEM production applications.
• Physical AI: The combination of sensing hardware and intelligent algorithms to enable perception and autonomy in physical systems, including industrial robotics and automated vehicles.
• Start of production (SOP): The scheduled launch date when mass-manufacturing of a product, such as an automotive system, formally commences.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Soroush Salehian, Aeva Technologies, Inc.'s Co-Founder and CEO, and Saurabh Sinha, Aeva Technologies, Inc.'s CFO. Ahead of this call, we issued our fourth quarter and full year 2025 press release and presentation, which we will refer to today and can be found on our Investor Relations website at investors.aeva.com. Please note that on this call, we will be making forward-looking statements based on current expectations and assumptions, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. These statements reflect our views only as of today and should not be relied upon as representative of our views as of any subsequent date. These statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations.

For a further discussion of the material risks and other important factors that could affect our financial results, please refer to our filings with the SEC, including our most recent Form 10-Q and Form 10-K. In addition, during today's call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe are useful as supplemental measures of Aeva Technologies, Inc.'s performance. These non-GAAP measures should be considered in addition to, and not as a substitute for or in isolation from, GAAP results. The webcast replay of this call will be available on our company's website under the Investor Relations link. I will now turn the call over to Soroush.

Soroush Salehian: Thanks, Andrew, and good afternoon, everyone. 2025 was a transformational year at Aeva Technologies, Inc. In an evolving industry, we significantly solidified our leadership position with more customers adopting our unique perception platform and industry leaders partnering with us to further accelerate our momentum. Coming out of one of our best CES events to date this past January, Aeva Technologies, Inc. is building on that momentum and is off to a very strong start in 2026. We see a growing number of exciting opportunities to pursue this year and are focused on aligning supply to respond to the rapidly increasing demand for Aeva Technologies, Inc.'s suite of perception solutions. This will build on 2025’s significant accomplishments.

One of the biggest is our first major passenger vehicle production program award. This is from a top European passenger OEM long known as a leader in the automotive industry with a strong track record of bringing industry-defining capabilities to market at mass volume. Aeva Technologies, Inc. will be the exclusive LiDAR supplier to this OEM globally outside of China. In addition, NVIDIA also selected Aeva Technologies, Inc. as the reference LiDAR sensor for its DRIVE Hyperion development platform, which is being adopted by an expanding number of major OEMs to bring Level 3 and higher automation to their production vehicles. This is another major validation for the need for LiDAR from one of the leaders in the industry.

As the core LiDAR sensor on the platform, NVIDIA will incorporate our unique 4D data to enable OEM development, validation, and simulation, which we believe could further accelerate the adoption of Aeva Technologies, Inc.'s perception platform across the automotive industry. We also continue to deliver on milestones for production customers, such as Daimler Truck. With Daimler Truck, we successfully completed on-road validation of our Atlas B samples, and are on schedule to deliver final C samples this year. As the exclusive long-range LiDAR supplier and primary detection sensor for Daimler Trucks' autonomous production trucks, we are excited to continue supporting the progress towards commercialization.

To advance a growing number of opportunities beyond just automotive, we formed a strategic collaboration with LG Innotek to bring 4D LiDAR to a broad range of physical AI applications where LG Innotek is already a major player with significant global scale. The goal of our partnership is to leverage each other's strengths to accelerate deployment of Aeva Technologies, Inc.'s 4D LiDAR across multiple markets. As part of this, LG Innotek is investing up to $50 million in Aeva Technologies, Inc. through a combination of an equity stake, non-dilutive investment for new joint products for physical AI, and capital investments to bring production capacity online for our next generation of products.

Since forming the partnership last May, we have made quick progress on a number of fronts, including joint development of Omni, the new 360-degree product we unveiled at CES last month. This is in addition to Aeva Technologies, Inc.'s line of EVE precision sensors designed for micron-level accuracy in factory automation applications. Shipments of these sensors began in late 2025 to our initial customers, such as SICK, and are on track to ramp up this year. I am pleased to say that Aeva Technologies, Inc.'s financials also reflect our building momentum. We doubled our revenue in 2025 to a new record for the company, driven by increasing sensor shipments and expanding applications.

To better position Aeva Technologies, Inc. to meet this growing demand, we bolstered our balance sheet by approximately $150 million with leading partners LG Innotek and Apollo. With one of the strongest balance sheets in the industry and expanding interest for our differentiated technology, we look forward to another exciting year in 2026. Now let's dig a bit more into recent business developments. Starting first with our global production program award from a top European passenger OEM. This is the OEM we have been working on a development program with over the course of 2025 and previously referred to as a global top-10 passenger OEM. The award is significant for a couple of reasons. First, in scale.

The OEM sees Level 3 capabilities as a key differentiator for its next generation vehicles and is developing a standardized automated driving platform for broad deployment globally across multiple vehicle model lines, and not just the top-end models. Aeva Technologies, Inc. will act as the exclusive Tier 1 supplier globally, outside of China, through the middle of next decade, with a target SOP in 2028. Second, this win marks the first major passenger OEM transitioning from time-of-flight to FMCW. This OEM has extensive experience with time-of-flight LiDAR, including an initial rollout of limited Level 3 capabilities.

The OEM selected Aeva Technologies, Inc. for its next generation following extensive evaluation of other solutions and Aeva Technologies, Inc.'s ability to help the OEM achieve key use cases needed to safely enable Level 3 on a broader scale. Given this OEM's reputation as an industry leader in bringing new features and capabilities to the automotive market at mass volume, we believe their selection of Aeva Technologies, Inc. is a tremendous vote of confidence in the superior performance and scalability of our differentiated technology. We expect this to deepen our engagement with other major OEMs and potentially drive other OEMs also considering our perception technology to make a similar decision.

With our growing pipeline and deepening engagements, I am happy to share that a new global top-five passenger OEM has selected Aeva Technologies, Inc. for a development program focused on the configuration, integration, and validation of our Atlas Ultra sensor for their next generation global production vehicle platform. The OEM selected Aeva Technologies, Inc. for the development program after extensive experience with time-of-flight LiDAR and a growing appreciation that our unique performance helps address key use cases critical to enabling higher levels of automation, and at scale. We believe that Aeva Technologies, Inc. is well positioned given our differentiated performance, balance sheet, and commercial momentum, with more leading OEMs awarding Aeva Technologies, Inc. as well.

Another example of our growing momentum is NVIDIA selecting Aeva Technologies, Inc.'s 4D LiDAR as the reference LiDAR sensor for its DRIVE Hyperion platform. NVIDIA is one of the top leaders in autonomous vehicles and works with some of the biggest OEMs and industry players, such as Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis, Uber, and others. DRIVE Hyperion provides a common platform for integrated sensor and compute designed for real-world autonomous driving applications. The same architecture consisting of a common suite of LiDAR, radar, and cameras can support a wide range of vehicle types, from passenger vehicles to robotaxis and delivery fleets across multiple configurations.

We believe NVIDIA’s selection further solidifies the case for LiDAR to enable higher levels of automation and has the potential to accelerate adoption of our technology. As the reference sensor on the DRIVE Hyperion platform, NVIDIA is integrating our 4D data for OEM development, validation, and simulation. This has the potential to effectively make Aeva Technologies, Inc. a core LiDAR supplier to passenger and commercial vehicle OEMs using the platform globally outside of China. As OEMs incorporate Aeva Technologies, Inc.’s added dimension of velocity into their AV stack, we believe it will drive greater collaboration with Aeva Technologies, Inc. and the potential reliance on our technology that positions us well to win their production programs.

Beyond automotive, Aeva Technologies, Inc. continues to expand into new applications. As we highlighted at Aeva Day last summer, our unique perception platform leverages the same core hardware components with different software to reach an $80+ billion market opportunity across a wide range of applications. This includes the fast-growing multibillion-dollar defense market where LiDAR is increasingly used for autonomous vehicles, drones, and security. We are engaged with a number of leaders in the space and recently announced our first defense win with Forterra. Forterra is a key provider of autonomous mission systems for defense and other complex operational environments and has selected Aeva Technologies, Inc. to use our LiDAR technology in its autonomous vehicle system AutoDrive.

Forterra is also transitioning to Aeva Technologies, Inc. due to our combination of long range, velocity, and vehicle positioning that enhances perception, including in unstructured and GPS-denied environments where defense vehicles need to operate. Unlike existing solutions, our sensors are also undetectable by night vision systems, a critical feature in sensitive operational environments. We believe the large defense market can be a meaningful portion of our business in the near term. We have already begun sizable shipments to Forterra last quarter and look forward to supporting this program as well as other defense opportunities that we are currently engaged on. Moving now to Aeva Technologies, Inc.'s key objectives.

Let me start with a review of our 2025 goals before turning to our plans for 2026. We set ambitious goals for 2025 that were designed to further position Aeva Technologies, Inc. on a path for significant and sustainable growth, and it was an incredibly successful year. We exceeded our target for two additional wins with a top European passenger OEM production win and NVIDIA in automotive, with SICK AG and LMI Technologies in manufacturing and factory automation, as well as others such as Sensys Gatso and smart infrastructure.

In terms of product and manufacturing readiness, we successfully completed the final release for our Atlas product as well as the buildup of our automated final assembly line, which we expect to enable systems annual capacity to reach 100,000. As we will discuss later on, one of our objectives for this year is to focus on increasing capacity of our supply chain in collaboration with our key partners.

Aeva Technologies, Inc. also made significant strides towards expanding into new applications, such as precision sensing with our E sensors that have already begun shipping, and a strategic collaboration with LG Innotek that has resulted in our expansion into new physical AI and robotics applications with joint new products that we aim to bring to the market. We accomplished all of this while meeting our financial targets to grow revenues by about 100% and also reducing operating expenses by more than 10%. Looking to 2026, we are focused on further solidifying our leadership position in sensing and perception and our path to profitability.

In particular, we are targeting another four or more commercial wins this year, including within automotive and non-automotive applications. At the same time, we will be equally focused on upcoming production launches with our customers. We are on schedule to begin shipping our Atlas C samples to Daimler Truck this year and are working closely together ahead of start of production. We also plan to further accelerate our expansion within the industrial robotics and the broader physical AI space, with the release of Omni that is targeted for the second half of this year, and a five-times increase in industrial sensor shipments. To support our growing programs, we will build on the work to scale our manufacturing achieved last year.

Key milestones will be beginning manufacturing on our fully automated final assembly line, as well as working with our key partners to increase capacity for our module supply chain to support the growing number of commercial wins. Lastly, we plan to do all of this while continuing to strengthen our financial position. Consistent with the financial framework that we shared at Aeva Day last year, and what we delivered over the prior few years, we target another year of significant growth while maintaining similar levels of operating expenses.

To sum it up, we expect this year will be another major year for Aeva Technologies, Inc., with significant opportunities to advance our commercial momentum with new wins, while keeping our ongoing focus on supporting existing programs and financial discipline. I will now turn the call over to Saurabh for the financial results.

Saurabh Sinha: Thank you, Soroush, and good afternoon, everyone. Before I walk through the financials, I want to emphasize themes that defined our fourth quarter and full year 2025 performance. We are seeing increasing near-term commercial momentum in existing as well as new markets which have shorter sales cycles, while at the same time continuing to grow our mid-term revenue potential with major program awards. We are also strategically positioning Aeva Technologies, Inc. with partnerships such as with LG Innotek to further capture the rapidly growing number of opportunities across physical AI. We continue to do this with disciplined capital management supported by the strategic financing we completed earlier in 2025, which strengthens our liquidity and extends our runway through key milestones.

Now let me review Aeva Technologies, Inc.'s Q4 and full year 2025 financial results. We had a record revenue quarter and year in 2025. Revenue in Q4 was $5.6 million, and for the full year, $18.1 million, which reflects doubling of our revenues last year compared to 2024. This increase in revenue was driven by higher sensor shipments across a number of customers and applications, as well as NRE revenues from customers such as Daimler Truck and the top European passenger OEM. Our non-GAAP operating loss was $23.8 million in Q4 and $102 million for the full year. On a full-year basis, non-GAAP operating loss declined by 17%, driven by a 12% reduction in non-GAAP operating expenses.

Aeva Technologies, Inc.'s gross cash used, which we define as operating cash flow less capital expenditures, was $23.7 million in Q4 and $119.7 million for the full year. Aeva Technologies, Inc.'s total available liquidity at the end of 2025 was $246.9 million, which consists of $121.9 million in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities, and $125 million in an undrawn facility that is fully available to draw at management’s sole discretion. We believe this provides Aeva Technologies, Inc. advantage to continue supporting both existing customers and securing additional wins across a broad range of applications. Moving now to our financial outlook for 2026.

At a high level, we expect to continue strengthening our financial performance that is consistent with the framework we highlighted at the Aeva Day last summer. More specifically, we target growing revenue to the range of $30 million to $36 million in 2026, which would represent an increase of approximately 70% to 100% year over year and marks our third consecutive year of a similar revenue trajectory of essentially doubling annually. The targeted growth in revenue is anticipated to come from a combination of increasing product shipments and increasing contributions from multiple programs as they approach production. Where we land within our guided range will depend on the exact timing of customer shipments, development activities, and ramp.

Consistent with prior years, we expect revenues to fluctuate from quarter to quarter. In terms of spend, we plan to remain strategic and disciplined in how we manage our capital. We see opportunities to balance the need to invest in the business with the completion of certain product development costs, and as such, we target full year 2026 non-GAAP operating expenses to be similar to the prior year or a slight increase of up to 10%. In summary, Aeva Technologies, Inc. is on its roadmap to capture more of the $80+ billion market opportunity while maintaining a disciplined financial approach.

Looking ahead, we expect this to continue, and we are focused on maintaining a balance sheet to enable further expansion while continuing to deliver on our customers' milestones. I will now turn the call back to Soroush for closing remarks.

Soroush Salehian: Thank you, Saurabh. Across an expanding number of industries—from automotive to industrial automation, robotics, and more—the momentum for our perception platform to enable the rise of physical AI is increasingly clear and taking hold. Coming off a landmark year at Aeva Technologies, Inc., I would like to thank the Aeva Technologies, Inc. team for their dedication and tireless work, as well as our growing list of stakeholders for their tremendous contribution and support. I fully expect 2026 to be another major year for us with focus on execution and a growing number of opportunities to further strengthen Aeva Technologies, Inc.'s leadership position and the foundation for significant long-term value. We will now open for questions.

Stephanie: Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, press 1 on your keypad. To leave the queue at any time, press 2. In the interest of time, we ask you please limit yourself to one question. Once again, press 1 to ask a question. We will take our first question from Joseph Moore with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Joseph Moore: Great. Thank you. I wonder if you could talk about the NVIDIA relationship a bit more. I know we discussed at CES, but how long have you been working with them, and can you talk about what benefits you may see from that over time?

Soroush Salehian: Hi, Joe. This is Soroush. Happy to take that. This NVIDIA reference win for us is a major collaboration. The biggest piece about it is this is not just another collaboration where anybody can interface with the NVIDIA stack. This is the result of a creative effort that we have been working together on for quite some time, and we are actively working on a production program for an OEM together. This is, first of all, a validation for LiDAR because NVIDIA is one of the top leaders in the AV space. Our partnership surrounds our deployment of Atlas Ultra, as well as plugging in Atlas, specifically for all the OEMs that are developing on the NVIDIA DRIVE Hyperion platform.

Why this matters is because it is one common platform—one reference set of the same LiDAR, the same radar and camera, as well as NVIDIA compute with the software on top—that is going to be replicated across all the OEMs that work with NVIDIA. That is why we think it can have significant potential for us to, with one partner, reach multiple OEMs. As a result of that, and on the heels of our win with the top European OEM, we are seeing increasing demand and increasing conversion rate for the company to get additional wins and bring the product to market.

As OEMs—leaders in the space such as Mercedes-Benz, Uber, Stellantis, and others—deploy these technologies, we expect that the potential for our LiDAR sensor to be used as a reference set for these production programs will be very significant and critical for deployments, specifically for Level 3 and beyond.

Joseph Moore: Very cool. Congratulations. Thank you.

Stephanie: Thank you. We will take our next question from Colin Rusch with Oppenheimer & Co. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Colin Rusch: Thanks, and congrats on this top-five development program. I would love to understand a bit more with that top-five passenger OEM—the competitive dynamics, how many other folks are at the table, and where you really found some leverage to push yourself to the front. The second part of my question is around the pipeline in the defense space. Having Forterra is a great validation, but how robust is the pipeline around those defense applications as we move towards a more autonomous military environment across the globe?

Soroush Salehian: Yes, Colin, happy to take that. First, on the top-five OEM, the biggest thing for us is this is another major validation point for the transition from time-of-flight toward FMCW and the growing pipeline for our technology. This OEM has extensive experience with time-of-flight and existing LiDAR solutions. Based on our engagement and the joint development we are doing now, they are increasingly looking to adopt our technology. They view FMCW as the key driver for future-proofing their AV stack. As the OEM transitions from lower-level automation to Level 3 and higher, they can take advantage of the differentiation from FMCW and from our perception stack. We are progressing with configuration and integration around our Atlas Ultra.

Importantly, we will be working on one common platform built on the same Atlas Ultra product that we are deploying for the other top-10 passenger OEM, with some tuning relevant to this OEM—mostly in software—to deploy this across multiple vehicle lines and across multiple car brands for the OEM's global production platform. Given where we are, we believe Aeva Technologies, Inc. is very well positioned, given our differentiated performance, technology platform, balance sheet, and growing commercial momentum with our partners, to deliver on this program and continue our conversion rate from development toward production.

On defense, as I mentioned, this is a growing and already large market increasingly looking into advanced sensing like LiDAR to enable autonomy at different levels, including for AGVs—autonomous ground vehicles—and drone applications. Our first win with Forterra in defense was at the beginning of this year, and we are moving quickly. We have already started making sizable shipments to Forterra. We have a number of other engagements in defense that we think could be a meaningful contributor to our near-term product sales. It is another proof point that the team here is executing on multiple fronts.

Aeva Technologies, Inc. is one of the only pure-play companies in the perception space with real commercial traction both in automotive and non-automotive applications, and we are looking to leverage that and scale to support demand. That is the focus for this year.

Colin Rusch: Appreciate the insight. Thanks.

Stephanie: Thank you. We will take our next question from Suji Desilva with ROTH Capital. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Suji Desilva: Hi, Soroush. Congratulations on the customer announcement here. Can you talk about the physical AI market? I know LG Innotek is a partner there, but will LG Innotek enable you to tap the global physical AI opportunity, or will you need other partners to target various pockets of that?

Soroush Salehian: Yes, Suji, happy to answer that. The rise of physical AI is broad and expanding quickly. It will hinge on advanced sensing—LiDAR and perception—significantly and increasingly in the coming years. There is near-term opportunity in physical AI. With the same core platform and different software, we can address different markets: automotive, manufacturing automation, or defense. We can also scale performance to provide unique capabilities that are not achievable with existing LiDAR solutions—for example, achieving micron-level accuracy for factory automation applications. That relates directly to physical AI and robotics. In our strategic collaboration with LG Innotek, we see them as a key partner that can help us expand into these markets.

They have credibility, scale, and resources, and most importantly, commitment at the highest level to bring together new products based on FMCW technology for those markets. They are one of the largest suppliers of camera and vision modules to consumer companies, delivering automotive solutions with a number of players, and working on vision and laser-based solutions for the robotics market, including humanoids. Our first jointly developed product is Omni, which is a 360-degree sensor solution for the industrial robotics market, and we think that will be a big part of physical AI applications. We are also working on next-generation products that we think can help address other markets and customers I mentioned earlier. We are in a very good position.

They are investing significantly—about $50 million—in the company and also taking on the CapEx for that, which is a good sign. We will continue to leverage existing partners and deliver on those new market expansions that we are starting to see now.

Suji Desilva: My other question on the defense market: why are you now seeing the interest and traction from defense customers? Is it your readiness or their interest catalyzing that? Also, is the competitive landscape different there, or what are they using currently that they may be upgrading to FMCW?

Soroush Salehian: The defense budget is seeing significant growth year over year. We are seeing it rely more heavily on AI-based, edge-based solutions, which is why having a perception system—and not just a gadget—is important. With our technology, there are several key advantages driving acceleration of defense opportunities. For ground vehicles, such as with Forterra, a key challenge is operating in GPS-denied environments. With our technology, because we can do our own motion estimation and odometry, that helps with navigation in GPS-denied environments—one of the advantages of FMCW. We also have long-range sensing with velocity, which is critical to instantly detect dynamic events in the field.

Very importantly, time-of-flight sensors are easily detectable by night vision goggles, which have high penetration across the battlefield. With our technology, the sensors are not visible in night vision goggles, besides the other advantages mentioned. We are seeing interest from other players, and it is moving quickly. As part of last year, we had sizable shipments in defense applications—almost a double-digit percentage of our product sales. We are being pulled into that market, which is quite exciting.

Stephanie: Thank you. We will take our next question from Richard Shannon with Craig-Hallum. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Richard Shannon: Thanks for taking my question. First, on the top-five OEM, your answer leaned toward making me think there is no other competition going on here. Can you state what you think is going on there? Second, on the targeting four wins for this year, how many of those should we expect to be in the auto space with higher volume opportunities?

Soroush Salehian: Good question. On the top-five OEM, there has always been competition, but the competitive landscape has consolidated. The number of pure-play capable companies that can compete is less. A key driver for our engagement with the OEM is their intention to transition to FMCW. Based on everything we see and the feedback we hear, that transition is going to happen. We are working together on the timing and how we intercept that for the next-generation vehicle platforms. We are looking at options that could potentially accelerate and intercept an existing program, and we are also looking at opportunities that follow right after that, with similar SOPs to the other passenger program, maybe slightly later.

A key differentiator is our technology, but it is not just about tech. You have to have all the automotive capability—the certifications, the teams, the experience, and the ability as a Tier 1 supplier to deliver. Lastly, having a strong balance sheet helps us to be a viable, long-term partner to an OEM like that. The catalyst for us has been the top-10 passenger OEM followed by NVIDIA. We are seeing growing demand from multiple OEMs, including other top-10 or top-five OEMs, discussing the adoption of our technology. On the wins for this year, we target about four wins.

My expectation is that it will be split fairly evenly—let us say two and two—between automotive and non-automotive, but it depends on customer timing and decision-making. We have multiple programs across each of these markets—within automotive passenger and commercial vehicles and across non-automotive sectors—that provide us the opportunity. I hope we can exceed the target, but we are setting aggressive goals, which is about twice what we targeted last year.

Stephanie: Thank you. We will take our next question from Matthew Picciulli with Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Matthew Picciulli: Congrats on the quarter, and thank you for taking my questions. We have seen some recent pullbacks from OEMs toward their Level 3 deployments. Do you foresee this impacting any of the existing programs that you have? More broadly, with anything that is in the pipeline, do you foresee any OEMs delaying their timelines?

Soroush Salehian: Sure, Matt. Some OEM programs that are looking to transition are doing so to future-proof their stack. With the experience they built up with their existing stack and solutions, there were gaps. That creates an opportunity for us. One of the reasons we have the Level 3 program with this top-10 passenger OEM is because they decided to make that transition from another time-of-flight solution. Depending on who you are talking about, they are now focusing separate from Level 2 on Level 3 for programs to start in a couple of years from now—by 2028. We are seeing a market focus across multiple OEMs to achieve similar goals in a similar timeframe between 2028 to 2029.

This is not just one OEM; it is multiple. As you see from the announcement today on the top-five OEM, that is another with a similar timeline in mind. Some of those adjustments or transitions coincide with OEMs making those decisions. It does not mean they are not looking to do Level 3—they are looking to bring Level 3 with the right partners and the right stack as soon as possible, and they are putting focus on that besides Level 2 programs.

Matthew Picciulli: Great. Thank you.

Stephanie: Thank you. This concludes today's question-and-answer session. This brings us to the end of today's meeting. We appreciate your time and participation. You may now disconnect. Good day. My name is Stephanie, and I will be your conference facilitator. I would like to welcome everyone to the Aeva Technologies, Inc. Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Following the opening remarks, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded and simultaneously webcast. I would like to now turn the call over to Andrew Fung, Senior Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Andrew, please go ahead.

Thank you, and welcome, everyone, to Aeva Technologies, Inc.'s Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call.

Andrew Fung: Joining on the call today are Soroush Salehian, Aeva Technologies, Inc.'s Co-Founder and CEO, and Saurabh Sinha, Aeva Technologies, Inc.'s CFO. Ahead of this call, we issued our fourth quarter and full year 2025 press release and presentation, which we will refer to today and can be found on our Investor Relations website at investors.aeva.com. Please note that on this call, we will be making forward-looking statements based on current expectations and assumptions, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. These statements reflect our views only as of today and should not be relied upon as representative of our views as of any subsequent date.

These statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. For a further discussion of the material risks and other important factors that could affect our financial results, please refer to our filings with the SEC, including our most recent Form 10-Q and Form 10-Ks. In addition, during today's call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe are useful as supplemental measures of Aeva Technologies, Inc.'s performance. These non-GAAP measures should be considered in addition to, and not as a substitute for or in isolation from, GAAP results. The webcast replay of this call will be available on our company's website under the Investor Relations link.

I will now turn the call over to Soroush.

Soroush Salehian: Thanks, Andrew, and good afternoon, everyone. 2025 was a transformational year at Aeva Technologies, Inc. In an evolving industry, we significantly solidified our leadership position with more customers adopting our unique perception platform and industry leaders partnering with us to further accelerate our momentum. Coming out of one of our best CES events to date this past January, Aeva Technologies, Inc. is building on that momentum and is off to a very strong start in 2026. We see a growing number of exciting opportunities to pursue this year and are focused on aligning supply to respond to the rapidly increasing demand for Aeva Technologies, Inc.'s suite of perception solutions. This will build on 2025’s significant accomplishments.

One of the biggest is our first major passenger vehicle production program award. This is from a top European passenger OEM long known as a leader in the automotive industry, with a strong track record of bringing industry-defining capabilities to market at mass volume. Aeva Technologies, Inc. will be the exclusive LiDAR supplier to this OEM globally outside of China. In addition, NVIDIA also selected Aeva Technologies, Inc. as the reference LiDAR sensor for its DRIVE Hyperion development platform, which is being adopted by an expanding number of major OEMs to bring Level 3 and higher automation to their production vehicles. This is another major validation for the need for LiDAR from one of the leaders in the industry.

As the core LiDAR sensor on the platform, NVIDIA will incorporate our unique 4D data to enable OEM development, validation, and simulation, which we believe could further accelerate the adoption of Aeva Technologies, Inc.'s perception platform across the automotive industry. We also continue to deliver on milestones for existing production customers, such as Daimler Truck. With Daimler Truck, we successfully completed on-road validation of our Atlas B samples and are on schedule to deliver final C samples this year. As the exclusive long-range LiDAR supplier and primary detection sensor for Daimler Trucks' autonomous production trucks, we are excited to continue supporting the progress towards commercialization.

To advance a growing number of opportunities beyond just automotive, we formed a strategic collaboration with LG Innotek to bring 4D LiDAR to a broad range of physical AI applications where LG Innotek is already a major player with significant global scale. The goal of our partnership is to leverage each other's strengths to accelerate deployment of Aeva Technologies, Inc.'s 4D LiDAR across multiple markets. As part of this, LG Innotek is investing up to $50 million in Aeva Technologies, Inc. through a combination of an equity stake, non-dilutive investment for new joint products for physical AI, and capital investments to bring production capacity online for our next generation of products.

Since forming the partnership last May, we have made quick progress on a number of fronts, including joint development of Omni, the new 360-degree product to be unveiled at CES last month. This is in addition to Aeva Technologies, Inc.'s line of EVE precision sensors designed for micron-level accuracy in factory automation applications. Shipments of these sensors began in late 2025 to our initial customers, such as SICK, and are on track to ramp up this year. I am pleased to say that Aeva Technologies, Inc.'s financials also reflect our building momentum. We doubled our revenue in 2025 to a new record for the company, driven by increasing sensor shipments and expanding applications.

To better position Aeva Technologies, Inc. to meet this growing demand, we bolstered our balance sheet by approximately $150 million with leading partners, LG Innotek and Apollo. With one of the strongest balance sheets in the industry and expanding interest for our differentiated technology, we look forward to another exciting year in 2026. Now let's dig a bit more into recent business developments. Starting first with our global production program award from a top European passenger OEM. This is the OEM we have been working on a development program with over the course of 2025 and previously referred to as a global top-10 passenger OEM. The award is significant for a couple of reasons. First, in scale.

The OEM sees Level 3 capabilities as a key differentiator for its next generation vehicles and is developing a standardized automated driving platform for broad deployment globally across multiple vehicle model lines, and not just the top-end models. Aeva Technologies, Inc. will act as the exclusive Tier 1 supplier globally, outside of China, through the middle of next decade, with a target SOP in 2028. Second, this win marks the first major passenger OEM transitioning from time-of-flight to FMCW. This OEM has extensive experience with time-of-flight LiDAR, including an initial rollout of limited Level 3 capabilities.

The OEM selected Aeva Technologies, Inc. for its next generation following extensive evaluation of other solutions and Aeva Technologies, Inc.'s ability to help the OEM achieve key use cases needed to safely enable Level 3 on a broader scale. Given this OEM's reputation as an industry leader in bringing new features and capabilities to the automotive market at mass volume, we believe their selection of Aeva Technologies, Inc. is a tremendous vote of confidence in the superior performance and scalability of our differentiated technology. We expect this to deepen our engagement with other major OEMs and potentially drive other OEMs also considering our perception technology to make a similar decision.

With our growing pipeline and deepening engagements, I am happy to share that a new global top-five passenger OEM has selected Aeva Technologies, Inc. for a development program focused on the configuration, integration, and validation of our Atlas Ultra sensor for their next generation global production vehicle platform. The OEM selected Aeva Technologies, Inc. for the development program after extensive experience with time-of-flight LiDAR and a growing appreciation that our unique performance helps address key use cases critical to enabling higher levels of automation and at scale. We believe that Aeva Technologies, Inc. is well positioned given our differentiated performance, balance sheet, and commercial momentum with more leading OEMs awarding Aeva Technologies, Inc. as well.

Another example of our growing momentum is NVIDIA selecting Aeva Technologies, Inc.'s 4D LiDAR as the reference LiDAR sensor for its DRIVE Hyperion platform. NVIDIA is one of the top leaders in autonomous vehicles and works with some of the biggest OEMs and industry players, such as Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis, Uber, and others. DRIVE Hyperion provides a common platform for integrated sensor and compute designed for real-world autonomous driving applications. The same architecture consisting of a common suite of LiDAR, radar, and cameras can support a wide range of vehicle types, from passenger vehicles to robotaxis and delivery fleets across multiple configurations.

We believe NVIDIA’s selection further solidifies the case for LiDAR to enable higher levels of automation and has the potential to accelerate adoption of our technology. As the reference sensor on the DRIVE Hyperion platform, NVIDIA is integrating our 4D data for OEM development, validation, and simulation. This has the potential to effectively make Aeva Technologies, Inc. a core LiDAR supplier to passenger and commercial vehicle OEMs using the platform globally outside of China. As OEMs incorporate Aeva Technologies, Inc.’s added dimension of velocity into their AV stack, we believe it will drive greater collaboration with Aeva Technologies, Inc. and the potential reliance on our technology that positions us well to win their production programs.

Beyond automotive, Aeva Technologies, Inc. continues to expand into new applications. As we highlighted at Aeva Day last summer, our unique perception platform leverages the same core hardware components with different software to reach an $80+ billion market opportunity across a wide range of applications. This includes the fast-growing multibillion-dollar defense market where LiDAR is increasingly used for autonomous vehicles, drones, and security. We are engaged with a number of leaders in the space and recently announced our first defense win with Forterra. Forterra is a key provider of autonomous mission systems for defense and other complex operational environments and has selected Aeva Technologies, Inc. to use our LiDAR technology in its autonomous vehicle system AutoDrive.

Forterra is also transitioning to Aeva Technologies, Inc. due to our combination of long range, velocity, and vehicle positioning that enhances perception, including unstructured and in GPS-denied environments where defense vehicles need to operate. Unlike existing solutions, our sensors are also undetectable by night vision systems, a critical feature in sensitive operational environments. We believe the large defense market can be a meaningful portion of our business in the near term. We have already begun sizable shipments to Forterra last quarter and look forward to supporting this program as well as other defense opportunities that we are currently engaged on. Moving now to Aeva Technologies, Inc.'s key objectives.

Let me start with a review of our 2025 goals before turning to our plans for 2026. We set ambitious goals for 2025 that were designed to further position Aeva Technologies, Inc. on a path for significant and sustainable growth, and it was an incredibly successful year. We exceeded our target for two additional wins with a top European passenger OEM production win and NVIDIA in automotive, with SICK AG and LMI Technologies in manufacturing and factory automation, as well as others such as Sensys Gatso and smart infrastructure.

In terms of product and manufacturing readiness, we successfully completed the final release for our Atlas product as well as the buildup of our automated final assembly line, which we expect to enable systems annual capacity to reach 100,000. As we will discuss later on, one of our objectives for this year is to focus on increasing capacity of our supply chain in collaboration with our key partners.

Aeva Technologies, Inc. also made significant strides towards expanding into new applications, such as precision sensing with our E sensors that have already begun shipping, and a strategic collaboration with LG Innotek that has resulted in our expansion into new physical AI and robotics applications, with joint new products that we aim to bring to the market. We accomplished all of this while meeting our financial targets to grow revenues by about 100% and also reducing operating expenses by more than 10%. Looking to 2026, we are focused on further solidifying our leadership position in sensing and perception and our path to profitability.

In particular, we are targeting another four or more commercial wins this year, including within automotive and non-automotive applications. At the same time, we will be equally focused on upcoming production launches with our customers. We are on schedule to begin shipping our Atlas C samples to Daimler Truck this year and are working closely together ahead of start of production.

This article is a transcript of this conference call produced for The Motley Fool. While we strive for our Foolish Best, there may be errors, omissions, or inaccuracies in this transcript. Parts of this article were created using Large Language Models (LLMs) based on The Motley Fool's insights and investing approach. It has been reviewed by our AI quality control systems. Since LLMs cannot (currently) own stocks, it has no positions in any of the stocks mentioned. As with all our articles, The Motley Fool does not assume any responsibility for your use of this content, and we strongly encourage you to do your own research, including listening to the call yourself and reading the company's SEC filings. Please see our Terms and Conditions for additional details, including our Obligatory Capitalized Disclaimers of Liability.

The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.