RoboSense could be a long-term winner because it is moving fast to ship all kinds of humanoid robot components, its 'eyes, skin and muscles', well beyond lidar. The short term looks rough, with little said yet about the recall and margins deteriorating in driver-assistance systems. x.com 

Chinese lidar makers Hesai and RoboSense are not walking into a China solar-style trap. Their primary risks are Huawei undercutting them to take market share and advances in non-lidar alternatives. Although Hesai trades at a premium to RoboSense, it is Hesai that faces more of an existential threat. x.com  x.com 

Ouster and Aeva have each doubled in a year on the story that humanoid robots need LiDAR, but no link in that chain looks able to hold its price once capacity catches up. Omdia puts total humanoid LiDAR demand near 400,000 units by 2030, while Hesai alone is scaling toward 4 million units a year in 2026, and Tesla Optimus and Figure 03 rely on cameras. The two names making real money are Chinese. Ouster's best argument is its Stereolabs hedge if cameras win. x.com  x.com 

Hesai looks like the best, cleanest and cheapest exposure to driver assistance and robotics, despite being Chinese. LiDAR adoption is accelerating for L3/L4 in new cars, robotaxis are reaching an inflection point, and consumer and industrial robotics are picking up. Customers include Mercedes, Xiaomi, BYD, Li Auto and nearly all robotaxi operators except Waymo, such as Zoox, Aurora, WeRide, Pony and DiDi, and it is a certified LiDAR partner for Nvidia's Hyperion platform. x.com 

Ouster is positioned to be rerated as lidar becomes a sought-after industry once autonomy and robotics go mainstream. Its niche market has limited competition, making it easy for investors to find, much as memory's scarcity made Micron the easy pick when AI demand hit, though at a far smaller scale. If its numbers keep growing and it stays on track for positive operating profit, a rerate could come easily; valuation is hard because robotics has not had its breakthrough yet. x.com 

Ouster is the US-made lidar alternative for buyers who cannot use the Chinese leaders, Hesai and RoboSense. Hesai is on the Pentagon's Chinese military company list, so defense and drone programs must route around it, and Seneca's wildfire drones just picked Ouster's Rev8. Trailing revenue is $205M, with the latest quarter up 56%, and 14.4x sales is cheap for that growth, though it burned $82M of free cash flow last year. The open question is whether the lockout spreads into commercial robotics. … Show more

Hesai is a supplier to Nvidia's humanoid robot reference platform. It provides LiDAR and actuators to Unitree and Sharpa, the two companies Nvidia chose for Isaac GR00T, including actuators for Sharpa's reference dexterous hand under a cost-plus contract through its new SGI division. The China discount on the stock is getting ridiculous. The proposed SAFE LiDAR Act, which would phase out Chinese LiDAR across the US economy, is a risk, though unlikely to pass. x.com  x.com  x.com 

Ouster is a long-term hold that should deliver nice gains a year from now, backed by a wave of new deals. They include a 10-year, 100,000-unit-per-year Rev8 lidar supply agreement with Benchmark Electronics, a multi-year autonomous heavy-equipment contract with AIM Intelligent Machines and a drone-platform partnership with Seneca announced Oct 2. Q2 revenue hit $55M, up 56%, on 17,000+ sensors. The weekly chart shows a bull flag retesting support after breaking out of a multi-month base. x.com  … Show more

Robotics component suppliers get paid on every robot no matter which maker wins, as capital floods into the sector. Robotics VC hit a record of over $16 billion in a quarter, and Goldman sees the humanoid market growing from under $2 billion to $38 billion by 2035, with the inflection around 2027-28. Nvidia supplies the compute and training platforms, Ambarella edge AI chips, Ouster lidar, Vishay Precision force sensors, and memory makers the memory every robot needs. x.com  x.com 

Ouster sells perception, the layer Physical AI must buy to see before it acts and the next chokepoint after compute. Its lidar runs on custom digital silicon that scales like chips; the Rev8 native color lidar and $55M Stereolabs deal make it a camera, lidar and compute stack. Revenue rose 49% to $48.6M, it has about $155M net cash and no debt, and trades near 11x FY26 EV/sales. Risks: first profit only around 2028, $32M of insider sales, more authorized shares and a market still arriving. x.com  … Show more