Jay Yoon
Founder & Portfolio Manager of Summit Ridge Capital Management
Amazon is expanding its Proteus warehouse robots, which use Ouster lidar sensors, to broader warehouse use, and that is very bullish for Ouster. With Ouster's annual revenue around $220M, the expansion could move the needle materially, so a roughly 10% stock gain looks too muted. Ouster is also one of the only high-torque public plays on the physical AI and robotics theme, though its product's competitiveness is not clear. x.comÂ
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
Ouster's lidar and cameras, which let robots and machines see, are winning steady growth and new deployments. Q2 revenue grew 56% to $55M, its 14th straight quarter of product revenue growth. John Deere's GUSS Automation plans to use its Rev8 lidar, which Ouster calls the first native color lidar, in autonomous orchard machines, and a multimillion-dollar Utah expansion brings its traffic system to nearly 300 intersections and roadway locations. x.comÂ
Ouster is not a compelling way to play physical AI because lidar is a very crowded space and its edges over rivals look likely to be competed away quickly. There are countless better stocks to take advantage of the physical AI theme. Ouster looks okay but not worth touching, though not to the point of buying puts. x.com x.comÂ
Ouster should go much higher in coming years as physical AI arrives, and it just announced the first color lidar. Per @nachunja, it has 10,000 customers with only a few in production, including Google, Amazon, Caterpillar, John Deere and Anduril, and is the only Western lidar company at scale and the only Blue UAS-certified one. It has a healthy balance sheet with profitability near. It is one of two favorite robotics small caps, alongside Vishay Precision Group, and worth adding on pullbacks. … Show more
Ouster is a pick-and-shovel play on physical AI, because robots, autonomous systems, smart infrastructure and warehouses cannot automate what they cannot perceive, and lidar is foundational to that. Q2 revenue rose 56% to $55M on a record 17,000+ lidar and camera sensors shipped, with a 49% GAAP gross margin and $263M of cash and investments with no debt. Q3 guidance implies about 42% growth at the midpoint. x.comÂ
Ouster is not a buy at its recent price, because even a great business can be a bad investment if you pay too much. The stock has fallen 20% since that call, and stocks often draw the most attention at the worst time to buy. Physical AI remains a very bullish theme, and adding becomes attractive if the price keeps dropping and risk/reward improves. x.comÂ
Ouster has a lot of long-term upside as lidar gains traction, and at a $2.2 billion market cap it could make a Rigetti-like move if lidar takes off, since small starting caps allow outsized gains. It is preferable to Nokia, whose $78 billion market cap limits upside. The wedge breakout has already had its pop, though, so it is not worth chasing now. x.com x.comÂ
Ouster looks well positioned across autonomous vehicles, robotics, drones, transportation and logistics, and industrials after a conversation with management. It has big things happening with Amazon; management said they work very closely with Amazon but gave no specifics, possibly spanning robotics, logistics, data centers and Zoox's autonomous vehicles. x.com x.comÂ
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.comÂ
Ouster is what lets robots see, and its StereoLabs acquisition made it the only unified physical AI perception platform, combining LiDAR, stereo cameras, AI compute and sensor fusion. The deal effectively doubled its addressable market and added 10,000 customers. Product revenue has grown 12 straight quarters, sensor shipments rose 48% in 2025, and it has $211 million cash and no debt. CEO Angus Pacala says fewer than 1% of machine makers with autonomy strategies have deployed products. x.com … Show more
