Pony AI Inc. (PONY-W) recently released its first annual report following its Hong Kong listing. While the net loss for 2025 narrowed significantly by over 70% year-over-year, this was primarily attributable to gains from fair value changes. Under the non-GAAP measure, which better reflects the operational performance of its core business, the net loss actually widened by 30%.
Among its three major business segments, revenue from its largest segment, autonomous trucking services, grew by a mere 0.6% in 2025, nearly stalling. In contrast, its autonomous mobility services segment experienced explosive growth, but its revenue scale remains relatively small and is not yet sufficient to drive profitability. Currently, Pony AI remains in a phase of "burning cash for scale." Coupled with intensifying competition in the Robotaxi sector, this further squeezes profit margins. Although the company aims to offset cost pressures through fleet expansion and is accelerating its global footprint to seek new growth drivers, the question of when it will achieve profitability remains a pressing challenge.
01. Core Business Growth Stalls, Investment Gains Prop Up Quarterly Profit In 2025, Pony AI reported revenue of $90.001 million, a year-over-year increase of approximately 20%. The growth was primarily driven by increased revenue from the autonomous mobility services and technology licensing & applications segments. The net loss for the period was $76.758 million, a significant 72.1% reduction year-over-year. However, this improvement was largely due to a $128 million increase in the fair value of its trading financial assets, rather than a breakthrough in its core business profitability.
Excluding non-recurring gains and losses, Pony AI's non-GAAP net loss was $174 million, a 31.5% widening compared to the $132 million loss in 2024. The company attributed this mainly to increased operating expenses from ongoing business expansion and enhanced R&D efforts.
Notably, Pony AI achieved its first quarterly profit in Q4 2025. Quarterly revenue declined approximately 18% year-over-year to $29.125 million, but net profit reached a high of $75.452 million (approximately RMB 528 million). However, this profit was largely driven by fair value gains from investments in companies like Moore Threads. The non-GAAP net loss for the quarter was $49.038 million (approximately RMB 343 million), further widening from the $41.3 million loss in Q4 2024. This indicates that the quarterly profit was more of an accounting illusion created by investment gains.
Breaking down the business segments, autonomous trucking services remained Pony AI's largest revenue source, contributing $40.601 million or 45.1% of total 2025 revenue. However, growth in this core segment nearly stalled, with only a 0.6% year-over-year increase, compared to a 61.3% growth rate in 2024.
Technology licensing & applications generated annual revenue of $32.793 million, a 19.7% year-over-year increase, accounting for 36.4% of total revenue. However, Q4 2025 revenue for this segment halved year-over-year to $9.35 million. The company explained this was due to the recognition of a one-time project-based revenue in the same period of 2024, partially offset by growth in sales of autonomous driving domain controllers to clients.
In contrast, the autonomous mobility services segment showed strong growth. In 2025, this business generated revenue of $16.607 million, a substantial 128.6% year-over-year increase, with fee-based revenue growing nearly 400%. This was driven by growing user demand in first-tier cities, continuous optimization of fleet operations, and order growth following the launch of its seventh-generation fleet.
With this explosive revenue growth, the contribution of autonomous mobility services to total revenue increased from 9.7% in 2024 to 18.5% in 2025. Boosted by this segment, which has a relatively higher gross margin, Pony AI's overall gross margin for 2025 increased slightly by 0.5 percentage points to 15.7%. However, as a new growth engine, the autonomous mobility services segment remains relatively small in scale and cannot yet spearhead a profitability turnaround. The fundamental loss-making situation of Pony AI has not been substantially reversed.
02. Cash Flow "Bleeding" Worsens, Profitability Remains a Challenge Since 2023, Pony AI's driverless fleet has gradually begun regularized testing in cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. In November 2025 and February 2026, the company achieved positive per-vehicle profitability within the city limits of Guangzhou and Shenzhen, respectively.
However, this single-city profitability is merely a phased achievement and does not signify the official arrival of an inflection point towards overall profitability. Market analysts point out that Pony AI's long-term, deep cultivation of the Guangzhou and Shenzhen markets has provided it with rich localization experience, forming a prerequisite for achieving per-vehicle profitability. Furthermore, residents in Guangzhou and Shenzhen exhibit strong travel demand, higher willingness to pay, and the cities offer better road planning conditions. Looking nationwide, road conditions and operational costs vary significantly across different cities. Whether Pony AI can replicate this profitability in other markets remains to be tested.
Currently, Pony AI's Robotaxi business remains in an investment period of "burning cash for scale." On a non-GAAP basis, the company's R&D expenses in 2025 were $196 million, a 42.5% year-over-year increase. R&D expenses alone were twice the revenue for the same period. The company stated this increase mainly reflected the expansion of its R&D team to enhance large-scale deployment capabilities and increased development costs for its seventh-generation vehicles. Under the same measure, selling, general, and administrative expenses also grew by 49.1% year-over-year to $47.916 million, primarily due to increased personnel costs and professional service fees incurred to support the accelerated deployment of large-scale commercial operations.
The pressure on cash flow further confirms the operational challenges. Net cash used in operating activities in 2025 was -$165 million, worsening from -$111 million in 2024, with the net outflow scale expanding by nearly 50% year-over-year.
Additionally, fierce competition in the domestic Robotaxi industry increases the difficulty of achieving profitability. Besides mobility platforms like Caocao Chuxing (02643.HK) and Ruqi Chuxing (09680.HK), automakers like Xpeng Motors and SAIC Motor Corp., Ltd. (600104.SH) have also entered the Robotaxi field. In March of this year, Xpeng Motors announced the establishment of an independent Robotaxi business unit, planning to commence passenger-carrying demonstration operations in the second half of the year.
Against this backdrop, achieving economies of scale has become a key lever for Pony AI to reduce costs and drive profitability. To this end, Pony AI continues to expand its fleet size. As of March 25, 2026, the company's autonomous taxi fleet size had exceeded 1,400 vehicles, with plans to deploy over 3,000 autonomous taxis by the end of 2026. Pony AI's CFO, Wang Haojun, has publicly stated that the cost reduction from scale effects is mainly reflected in vehicle costs within the operational chain, aiding the continuous optimization of autonomous driving kit costs.
Simultaneously, Pony AI is accelerating its global layout to seek new growth avenues. The company expects to expand its autonomous mobility operations to over 20 cities globally by the end of 2026, with nearly half located in overseas markets. Currently, Pony AI's revenue is primarily concentrated domestically, with overseas expansion still in its early stages. In 2025, the company generated $2.437 million (approximately RMB 16.58 million) in revenue from overseas regions, accounting for less than 3% of total revenue, and has not yet formed a substantial revenue pillar.
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