AEye (NASDAQ:LIDR) released first-quarter financial results and hosted an earnings call on Wednesday. Read the complete transcript below.
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Summary
AEye reported a 60% increase in quarterly revenue year-over-year, driven by its software-defined architecture and long-range sensing capabilities.
The company's revenue-generating customer count increased from 16 to 21, with significant growth in issued quotes and active engagements, particularly in automotive, trucking, defense, and infrastructure sectors.
AEye's first-quarter GAAP net loss was $8.3 million, primarily due to higher stock-based compensation and professional fees, with a cash burn of $9.2 million.
The company reaffirmed its 2026 full-year cash burn target of $30 to $35 million, emphasizing its capital-efficient model supported by partnerships rather than owned infrastructure.
AEye's strategic partnerships with Nvidia, Syntec, and others are strengthening its market position, particularly in defense, automotive, and infrastructure markets.
Management highlighted the importance of providing end-to-end perception solutions rather than just sensors, which aligns with customer demand for integrated capabilities.
The company is optimistic about future growth, with expectations of a revenue inflection in the second half of 2026 as customer engagements convert into program commitments.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. My name is Joyce and I will be your conference operator today. At this time I would like to welcome you to AEye's first quarter 2026 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question at that time, please press star key, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star key, the number one again. Thank you. I would like to turn the conference over.
Keen Olson (Investor Relations Manager)
Good afternoon and thank you for joining AEye's first quarter 2026 earnings call. I'm Keen Olson, investor relations manager for AEye, and with me today are Matt Fish, Chief Executive Officer and Connor Tierney, Chief Financial Officer. Earlier today, AEye announced its financial Results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2026. A copy of the press release is available in the Investor Relations section of the company's website. Before we begin, today's discussion may include forward looking statements as defined in the securities laws and regulations of the United States with reference to future events, operating results or performance and are based on our current expectations and assumptions. Any forward looking statements are subject to inherent risks, uncertainties and changes in circumstances. Our actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by these forward looking statements. You can find more information about the risks, uncertainties and other factors in the reports. AEye files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including in a most recent periodic report. The statements to be made are as of today only and AEye does not intend to update any forward looking statements regardless of any new information, future developments or otherwise, except as may be required by law. In addition, we will be discussing non-GAAP financial measures on this call which we believe are relevant in assessing the financial performance of the business. These measures are presented as supplemental information only and should not be considered a substitute for financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. You can find reconciliations of these metrics to the most directly comparable GAAP measures within the press release. Now let me pass the call over to Matt.
Matt Fish (Chief Executive Officer)
Thank you Keen and thank you all for joining our first quarter 2026 earnings call. The quarter unfolded exactly as planned. Steady execution, no surprises, and a commercial pipeline that continued to grow. Our ecosystem partnerships and manufacturing capability remain strong and we now have more commercial engagement than at any point in our history. Our funnel continues to be the best barometer to benchmark our progress as revenue tends to be a lagging indicator. As of today, our revenue generating customer count has grown from 16 to 21 since our last earnings call. I'm also pleased to report that both our issued quotes and active engagements have increased by nearly 40% quarter over quarter. These leading indicators New technical engagements, inbound RFIs and PoC activity across automotive, trucking, defense, rail infrastructure and Intelligent Transportation Systems are all moving in the right direction. These indicators are the data that investors should focus on to understand where we are headed. Quarterly revenue is up almost 60% year over year. This meaningful growth is driven by our software defined architecture and long range sensing performance and reflects the strong pipeline activity building behind it. AEye's technology gives machines vision, the foundation of physical AEye and the prerequisite for every intelligent autonomous system being built. Today the market is potentially very large and is accelerating. Barclays projects the physical AEye market opportunity should reach as much as $1 trillion by 2035 and LiDAR is the enabling layer that makes it real. AEye software defined architecture positions us at the core of that ecosystem and the LiDAR sector's ongoing consolidation has only strengthened our relative position. AEye is on stronger footing coming out of that consolidation than going in Better capitalized, leaner in structure and with a commercial pipeline that continues to expand, automotive industry appears to be squarely shifting toward AI driven safety and software defined vehicle architectures and we believe long range LIDAR is becoming essential to that architecture. Not optional. Apollo offers best in class detection range when operating behind a windshield and is the only sensor we know of to be customer proven to reliably detect objects at distances of up to 1km. Our OEM engagement has increased driven by recent robotaxi investment announcements, growing trade policy implications and supply chain resilience concerns. With OEMs in the passenger vehicle segment actively seeking domestically sourced alternatives. AI's manufacturing partnership directly addresses that demand. Multiple new RFIs horizons you won across both passenger and commercial vehicle segments and OEMs have begun to reengage as L3 and L4 roadmaps are being reactivated and expanded in ground mobility. Evaluations by autonomous trucking companies are deepening. Multiple companies have programs underway and we are now shipping sensors into those evaluations. Apollo should be well suited to serve this expanding addressable market in transportation and infrastructure. Optus is now live at an active intersection in California in partnership with FlashEye and BlueBand. Additional US Smart intersection deployments are in progress. Our APAC expansion strategy is also progressing. An Australian S POC has advanced into a discussion of commercial terms. In Korea, we recently concluded a successful customer roadshow engaging with more than 10 OEMs across its rail and mobility sectors. Our business partnership with AEye Technology, Inc. in China remains strong and we have four additional customers now evaluating our Apollo LIDAR product in Defense, active shipments continue with an existing US Contractor for UAV wire detection. Repeat business is emerging within that account and Apollo is being evaluated for additional applications including UGV and Counter UAV with an expectation of multiple new RFQs. A significant development this quarter is our new commercial relationship with Syntech, a global defense systems company with established ties to meeting defense Primes. Syntechh is actively promoting Apollo to its customers and initial shipments are already underway. This partnership has the potential to unlock international defense and aviation markets outside of the United States, meaningfully expanding our addressable pipeline while complementing the domestic engagements we have already built. What drives Selection across all of these verticals is consistent AI's proven and reliable 1km detection range with unlimited software driven adjustability. That flexibility is paying dividends. For example, a Defense customer that initially engaged us for a single UAV wire detection application is now evaluating Apollo across three separate use cases without any change to the hardware they have already deployed in the field. This is a key differentiation factor that drives customers to select AI Stratos, the newest addition to our product lineup extends our capability up to 1.5 km of detection range with 500 meter performance behind a windshield at a disruptive price point through our manufacturing partnership with light on AI supply chain is globally diversified providing the flexibility and resilience to navigate geopolitical risk and shifting trade policies that we believe our peers cannot match. Our tech stack is derived from off the shelf telecom components which allows us to compete on cost while delivering the mass manufacturability and high performance our customers require. We continue to build on our partnership with Nvidia as it is the cornerstone of our automotive and industrial market positioning. Apollo is validated on Drive AGX Orin and has been demonstrated on Drive AGX4, Nvidia's next generation centralized Automotive compute platform In March we joined the Nvidia Halos AI Systems Inspection Lab, the world's first ANAB accredited AI systems inspection lab. ANAB accreditation is generally viewed by OEMs as a critical marker of confidence, reliability and quality assurance within their supply chain. Our Optus platform, powered by Nvidia Jetson Orin, extends our reach into infrastructure and industrial markets via our diversified software ecosystem. We are giving infrastructure and industrial customers a ready made path into physical AI without having to build perception capability from scratch. I will now turn the call over to Connor to review our first quarter result.
Connor Tierney (Chief Financial Officer)
Thank you Matt. Our strong commercial momentum is broad based showing up across or full addressable market rather than any single vertical. Our active customer base now spans defence, intelligent transportation, rail and logistics and security. A level of diversification we did not have a year ago. And the quality of that growth matters as much as the breadth. We are also seeing a growing pattern of repeat business across the customer base, a meaningful signal of product market fit and a direct validation of the performance advantages of or architecture. Our commercial progress is beginning to attract broader institutional attention. We added new sell-side analyst coverage this quarter and we are seeing a meaningful increase in both sell side and buy side interactions. An external signal that the commercial activity we have been describing is registering with the investment community. The revenue ramp is in its early stages, but the underlying metrics building behind it give us confidence in the trajectory ahead. Before I move to the financials, I want to spend a minute on what we are increasingly hearing from customers in my role bridging the financial and commercial sides of the business. This has become one of the most important strategic aspects investors are interested in right now. Customers today are not buying a sensor, they are buying a solution. The question they are asking is no longer whose lidar has the best spec sheet, it's who can help me deliver the end to end perception capability that my application needs faster and with less integration risk. That shift is showing up in nearly every RFI and RFQ we see. A customer in the security industry recently put it to us bluntly, they don't want to buy from a hardware company, they want to buy from the front end solution provider that integrates everything. That dynamic applies across all of or target markets and it is exactly the model AI has built. Financially the implication is meaningful. We do not need to absorb the cost or balance sheet impact of acquiring or building those capabilities orselves to deliver a complete perception solution, a real efficiency advantage as we scale. The proof is in the deal flow. We are seeing a healthy uptick in customer demand for a full end to end physical AI solution, not just a standalone sensor. We have been able to assemble those solutions through or partner ecosystem with a speed and breadth that we believe or peers, constrained by what they own internally cannot match. And as or recent customer additions illustrate, this model is working meaningful. New programs in defence infrastructure and adjacent mobility have come to us through or alongside or partners. Moving on to Financials. The first quarter 2026 revenue was $101,000 up almost 60% compared to $64,000 in Q1 2025 and up slightly versus Q4 2025 first quarter GAAP operating expenses were $8.9 million compared to $8.3 million in Q4 2025, reflecting higher stock based compensation and professional fees alongside continued investment in go-to-market and deployment execution. First quarter non GAAP operating expenses were $7.4 million, slightly lower than $7.5 million in Q4 2025, primarily due to lower payroll costs partially offset by increased professional fees. We reported a GAAP net loss of $8.3 million or $0.18 per share in the first quarter compared to a GAAP net loss of $7.3 million or $0.17 per share in Q4 2025. The increase was primarily driven by higher stock based compensation and professional fees, partially offset by lower personnel costs. On a non GAAP basis, or net loss was $6.7 million or $0.15 per share, essentially flat compared to a non GAAP net loss of $6.8 million or $0.15 per share in Q4 2025. First quarter cash burn was $9.2 million up from $7.5 million in Q4 2025, primarily reflecting Q1 seasonality. Our manufacturing model, built on Tier 1 partnerships rather than owned infrastructure, continues to keep or cash burn among the lowest in the sector. We ended the first quarter with cash cash equivalents and marketable securities of approximately $77.2 million compared to $86.5 million at the end of Q4 2025. The sequential decrease reflects the deliberate deployment of resorces into commercial operations, the go-to-market investment and operational execution required to convert the pipeline we or building. This is planned resorce deployment fully consistent with the guidance we set at the start of 2026 and we are tracking in line with that plan. We are reaffirming or 2026 full year cash burn target of 30 to 35 million dollars reflecting planned investment in commercial execution, sales and marketing and the operational build required to support customers as they move from evaluation into deployment. On a brief housekeeping note, while we are discussing capital in the days immediately following this call, AI plans to file a new shelf registration statement with the securities and Exchange Commission. Our existing shelf is expiring and this filing is a routine replacement standard corse of business. Our strategy has not changed, or capital framework has not changed and the filing does not reflect any near term financing intentions. The company remains well capitalized with Runway well into 2020. Our capital structure also remains simplified and strong with AI virtually debt free. That matters directly to the OEMs and industrial customers we are targeting for multi year program. Confidence is a prerequisite for selection and the architectural point Matt made Earlier compounds. Here, the same software defined platform that lets us tune Apollo to a customer specific frame rate, range and field of view is what lets us extend or accessible market without rebuilding from the ground up each time. Stratos makes that compounding advantage concrete. A third generation sensor that reaches new performance peers without a proportional increase in investment and one that drops directly into the same partner LED solutions model. Our peers with fixed sensor capability and internally owned software stacks cannot replicate that flexibility without absorbing significant development and integration costs. For customers who need capability without compromise, that equation continues to resonate. Our expectation for 2026 is unchanged. As technical engagements convert into program commitments, we or building the foundation from which a meaningful revenue inflection can follow. Getting there doesn't require outspending the field. Apollo's performance lead, or software defined architecture and a partner LED model combined with a cost structure built for scale not overhead make ors a capital efficient path to a meaningful revenue. Section I will now hand it back to Matt for closing remarks.
Matt Fish (Chief Executive Officer)
Thank you Connor. As we look ahead to the remainder of 2026, the focus is unchanged. Convert engagements into deployments the physical AI tailwinds driving this market are real and accelerating. Our technology continues to differentiate us. Our balance sheet provides the stability to execute and the partnerships we have built from Nvidia to Light on to Syntech and others lay the foundation for commercial scale. We are seeing the engagement activity and conversion momentum that give us confidence in our trajectory and we look forward to demonstrating that progress in the quarters ahead. Operator we are now ready to open the floor for questions.
OPERATOR
We will now begin the question and answer session. For this session we will allow up to three questions per person. If you would like to ask a question, please press Star key, the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press Star Key, the number one again. Your first question comes from the line of Paul Frat. Please go ahead.
Paul Frat
Hey, can you just update us on the collaboration and partnership with NVIDIA and then maybe give us a couple milestones that we should be looking for over the rest of the year on furthering that partnership?
Matt Fish (Chief Executive Officer)
Hey, welcome back Bo. Good to hear your voice. I'd summarize the relationship at this point as strong and progressing. We talked about in Q1 that we had integrated with their latest platform, NVIDIA Drive AGX Xavier, as well as joining the NVIDIA Holos AI Lab, which demonstrates our commitment and NVIDIA's support to automotive grade solution. Even today we've got a team out at NVIDIA's headquarters down in Silicon Valley they're testing, they start at lunchtime, they're not leaving there until midnight. Testing the latest Apollo software update. And really it's just, it's about validation. The horsepower and the technology that NVIDIA brings to the table. They're so prolific with their platform, the automotive industry. What this is about is validating our capabilities and performance to be ready for that OEM integration phase. And if you check the NVIDIA ecosystem website today, we're at the top of the list. Our performance is validated and we're the top performer on that list today. So look what we can think about. Let's just say between now and the end, end of the year there's a validation process that's the key task for us to be officially validated on NVIDIA AGX Xavier. And that's going to be our focus. And for example, it's one of the main reasons why we're out there spending 12 hours today so we can continue that validation process, get the feedback from NVIDIA, make the product stronger, tune it better and be ready for that OEM integration on their platform.
Paul Frat
Great, that's helpful. And then when you look at your customer engagements, up to 21 revenue generating, I think shipments. Can you just give us a little more color or detail on the commercial traction within certain key markets and then maybe Matt, if you could highlight which markets have the shortest selling time versus other markets.
Matt Fish (Chief Executive Officer)
Sure, absolutely. Thanks Bob. Great question. Look, we're super excited. We're basically at the highest level of commercial engagement we've ever had in this company. And I will tell you, we've added in that 31% growth customers in every one of those six market segments that Connor talked about earlier. So let's just jump into, I mean there's a lot of segments to cover, but let's focus on really a couple of key highlights. First one is defense. That's a real major standout. First of all, our detection range we believe is best in industry. The defense guys and the aerospace guys and the ground vehicle part of that, they love that aspect of AIs. Apollo solution and the software defined LIDAR piece allows us to be super flexible across different use cases, let's just say in the defense market for today and really point out the evidence we talked about in the earnings call. And we're working with many major US Defense primes. There's one in particular that we called out where not only we're getting repeat business, but they are scaling now Apollo across multiple of their business units. And we do that Essentially with a new software configuration there's no hardware change required. And by the way that expands to the six market segments that we mentioned. We can work across each of those without requiring a new hardware build or major hardware changes. And you know, so that's pretty big. I mean in terms of market velocity we are pleasantly surprised by how fast the fence is moving. There's a new breed of players in the market also that are moving things along very quickly. I would just highlight that as a high velocity market versus what we might expect traditionally. But look in other areas as well. We're now we have our Optus, this is our full perception solution. Connor talked about this earlier. It's not just about the sensor, it's about being able to collect data and then act. And we have our Optus solution up on a traffic intersection in the Bay Area today demonstrating that end to end capability. There'll be more to come in that space for sure. And we also just completed in the intelligent traffic system space a POC in Australia where they were trying to count trucks and delays in trucking and parking lots and manage feet from fleet capacity and they tried to do it with camera and radar and they couldn't make it work. And we've got them up and running now. The end customer has seen it and they're very happy with it. So look it's about number one customers are coming to us for that industry leading detection range, 1 km for Apollo and 1.5 km for Stratos. And then secondly that's software defined element of our product now only allows us to scale across market segments but it also scaling within customers. And I think those two attraction and differentiation points are really propelling us forward here.
Connor Tierney (Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, I think Paul, you also brought up the question about lead times and what we would see is probably two distinct patterns there. Certainly on the automotive side we're seeing longer lead times. It could take maybe two to three years to get to sop. But on non automotive that timeline is certainly accelerated. That said we're still seeing at least six to 12 months now. It can vary between customers. Some customers, some sectors move quicker, other move slower. It's just it all depends on the end customer and what their goals and priorities are.
Matt Fish (Chief Executive Officer)
Yeah, just hey, probably forgot to mention Syntech as well, another commercial partner we've added this quarter just further highlighting the expansion across multiple players in the defense space.
Paul Frat
Great. Are you in discussions with any additional partners Matt? Should we see an expansion like say, you know, the defense industry, you know, is huge. Are there others out there that you're looking at partnering with.
Matt Fish (Chief Executive Officer)
Yeah, absolutely. I count that on two fronts, but one is just the integrator or the end customer themselves. As we mentioned in the script, we've got like a 40% growth in our pipeline. So that's just a leading indicator to entering the POC phase. Absolutely. Across all of those segments. And then the second piece is let's talk about Optus™. This is where we have four partners today. And again, just if you take a step back above lidar and into the overall perception and intelligence solution, that's where those four partners are coming in and they're enabling us to drop into each of those segments very quickly. We have an open platform. It's based on the Nvidia Jetson™ platform, makes it very easy for developers to work with it. And even more importantly, as Connor had pointed out in the finance section is we're not having to. We're not constrained, trained by what software we develop in house. We've got these four guys that enable us to jump into these multiple market segments very quickly and throughout the rest of the year. I think you can look forward to expansion of those number of software partnerships as well.
Paul Frat
Great. Very helpful. Thanks, Matt. Thanks, Connor.
Matt Fish (Chief Executive Officer)
Thanks, Paul.
OPERATOR
Your next question comes from the line of Casey Ryan of amrx. Please go ahead,
Casey Ryan
Matt. Connor, good afternoon. Thanks for the great update. There's a lot to chew on here. I actually just wanted to jump into the trucking opportunity. I think independently. We've actually been hearing some good things about your sensor performance in that space. So with those opportunities in trucking, are they. Would they ever be displacing internal LIDAR production or is it all kind of greenfield new type of truck builds for various manufacturers? How would you describe kind of the nature of the opportunity with some of the truck possibilities?
Matt Fish (Chief Executive Officer)
Hey, Casey, thanks and welcome aboard. Your new assignment here. We appreciate the coverage. Absolutely. Thank you for that. Look, it is true we talked in the script about Apollo sensors now in evaluation with multiple L4 trucking players. And I think this has been further catalyzed with some of the announcements out there about big investments and capital being injected into that market. I would say that it's a mix of both of those things. There are concerns out there in the market today about, we'll call it supply chain resiliency, where the sensors are built and where the IP comes from. And this has opened up new doors for us. There are transitions happening away from supply chains that may be considered much higher risk. That's been one source. And the second piece is, I'LL call it more complementary where either one of those guys is sourcing, but now evaluating Apollo because of the range. Not sourcing, but now evaluating Apollo because of the range, we do really well at seeing far ahead. As you mentioned, you need to do that for heavy vehicles because they have a longer braking distance and in some cases it's complementing their existing LiDAR solution. You know, truck's a big object that has to worry about lots of different situations. Not just driving down the highway, but maybe pulling off on the shoulder and then having to pull back on safely. And one of the learnings we see coming out of that space is they need more coverage from wider and that's been helping us as well.
Connor Tierney (Chief Financial Officer)
Just one thing to add. Oh, yeah, please go ahead. I would just say, look, the natural conclusion is this is an L4 opportunity, but there has been some interest on the L2 side. You know, obviously that's a more cost competitive market, but we've seen a certain amount of interest there as well. So it's. You're talking about L4 and L2 potentially as well.
Casey Ryan
Got it. And then, not to beat a dead horse here, but in many truck deployments or sort of architectures, there's kind of a long range sensor and a short range sensor. It sounds like you guys might be able to fill both of those needs with your product portfolio.
Connor Tierney (Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, yeah. I'd say one thing that we really have going for us is the tunability of the sensor itself, the fact that it's customizable and what customers really like is the fact that we can do both long range and short range. Obviously, when you're on a highway, long range is paramount. It's critical. Right. That you have the braking distance. But sometimes. Right. In urban environments you need a wider field of view. Right. You're maybe looking 100 meters down the road. So the fact that we could have multi scan patterns embedded on the device and you could toggle back between different modes is really a game changer. And I don't think there's anybody out in the market that can offer that level of customization. So that's something that appeals a lot to the customers that we speak with. Yeah, okay, terrific. Yeah, that's a very exciting, you know, something that I think we always. Yeah, sorry, Case, you get the point I'm trying to make here is we don't necessarily have to do a hardware change. That's certainly something we could do, but we can solve the problems we solve.
Casey Ryan
Yeah, that's sort of the good answer, is that basically you guys can sort of address sort of a One stop shop, essentially for a customer. Okay. So jumping over to automotive, it's exciting to hear that people at least are thinking about L3 and L4, you know, offerings at some point. Do you see LiDAR being consumed as part of sort of driver safety packages still, or are you hearing and meeting customers who are talking about offering some sort of vehicle with L4 autonomy and sort of offering autonomy as a feature versus, say, just, you know, super good driver safety tools and safety packages?
Matt Fish (Chief Executive Officer)
It's a mix of both and I think you'll see that again. I had mentioned earlier about the 04 trucking space that there's been a lot of capital going in. Now you're seeing these partnerships with Uber, for example, to leverage some of those technology providers to bring capability outside of trucking into, say, robo taxis or other markets. We're definitely seeing a catalyst there. And then I think there have been a number of OEMs out there that talked about what they call hands off ISOF driving. Maybe we consider that more into the L3 range. And again, I have to really call out that the concern about supply chain resiliency has really brought a number of customers to our front door because of concerns and risk in that area, certainly in the level 3 space. And also a little bit of L2 and 8s, as Connor had mentioned, to solve some corner conditions that currently aren't efficiently covered by, like, ultrasonics and panoramic cameras. So it's a mix of all three. The sweet spot's definitely in the L3 side. Eyes off, hands off, but, you know, you've got all three in the mix.
Casey Ryan
Yeah. Okay, that's very exciting. I'm happy to hear about that. And yeah, I mean, certainly you're right. Kind of the new flow around robotaxi and L4 from a whole bunch of providers is certainly ramped up quite a bit in defense and specifically in drones. I think there's an issue around. It's not an issue a topic around the weight of a lidar sensor. And I wonder if you could just talk about the weight of your solutions and if, you know, there's like a roadmap to make it, you know, a
Matt Fish (Chief Executive Officer)
certain model lighter or sort of where you guys sit on that weight front in terms of consideration for potentially all defense applications, but primarily drones, obviously. Yeah, we're really light and we fit into that envelope quite well. I'm not sure if we published the specs on that, but we're definitely at the low end of the spectrum on weight. Also, keep in mind that the Kind of drones that you and I may sort of be directly exposed to may not be the kind of drones necessarily where you need long range LiDAR. For example, drones that travel at very high speeds, I'm talking about over 200 miles per hour. And because they're at that kind of speed, they need to see a kilometer out or a kilometer and a half out. Not the drones that Amazon uses to drop off packages. They're much more sophisticated surveillance and other type of drones. So it's we're absolutely fine in those and we're light enough to be considered for stronger drones as well. The other hot topic that's cropping up is drone detection and being able to assist intervention system to track when you have an inbound drone which are pretty small. Those kind of drones tend to be very small coming in and you want to get them while they're very far out. And that's again where the defense primes are coming to us because of the long range that we have.
Casey Ryan
Okay, good. Well, that's very, very exciting actually. And then just one last little smaller sort of, I guess it's not technical question, but you guys have talked about a $30 million contract opportunity over some longer period of time. I just wonder if that customer pulled some units or was part of the commercial account in one Q&OR if you expect them to be part of Q2.
Connor Tierney (Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, they're certainly in that count number. So the 12 customers, what I would say is that customer itself is probably not going to be a meaningful contributor to revenue this year. I think the revenue is probably a little bit further out in time. That said, what I would say is since we made that announcement, it was almost over a year ago now, there's been more customers that have come into the mix and more customers that have moved pretty quickly through that POC phase. So what we're seeing now is probably more nearer term opportunities with other customers and that's probably what's going to really drive revenue potential for this year.
Matt Fish (Chief Executive Officer)
Yeah. Okay, terrific. Well, this is really a super, very good, encouraging update and I appreciate the time and look forward to more as we go through the year. Thank you. Thanks, Casey. Take care, Casey. Thank you.
OPERATOR
Your next question comes from Richard Shannon of Craig Hallam. Please go ahead.
Richard Shannon
Well, great.
Richard Shannon
Thanks Matt and Connor for taking my questions. Jumped on a little late, so I may have missed some of the prepared remarks here. So I hope I don't repeat some past questions here. But I did want to touch on one of the key themes here of the press release here today about eng on the automotive side here, particularly with OEMs that are reengaging on L4 and L3 roadmaps here, would love to get some dynamics and understanding of those dynamics going on here and maybe you can elaborate on how many RFIs and how fast you think they'll move to RFQ in later stages.
Matt Fish (Chief Executive Officer)
Yeah, let me start with this and I think Connor probably follow on here. What Ed mentioned earlier, Richard, this did come up in the Q and A, which is what. What is driving some of this increase in attention? I think it's two pieces mainly. One is that you see a lot of funding coming into tech providers that have to deal with Uber, for example. There's quite a few of them that are driving increased interest and velocity in level four robo taxis. So that's one part of it. The other is we see definitely a growing concern over supply chain resilience and taking risks in those areas. And that's shifted business, shall we say, as Those passenger vehicle OEMs start waking up and their L3 programs are coming online. Those are the key drivers. I think we said earlier in the script the number of RFIs coming in has definitely increased. And you know, we've got out of the business of predicting OEM schedules because they're, you know, some of these have come and gone and, you know, we're just going to keep an eye on it. Quite honestly, we're not. You know, we've got enough in our manufacturing pipeline and readiness to hit the switch and get going with the device production when that time comes. We'll expect a little bit of heads up on this, but our lead times and our risk buys are lined up with any earliest possible timeline that we can imagine. But we just, we don't know. It's been very unpredictable, quite honestly.
Connor Tierney (Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah. The only thing I'd add to Matt is just the fact that we can go in cabin behind the glass. Right. That seems to be a big value prop for the OEMs. Obviously the aesthetics of being able to do that and then have the windshield basically as a way to protect the sensor itself and obviously clean it. So that's really interesting value prop for the OEMs and something that certainly differentiates us.
Matt Fish (Chief Executive Officer)
Yeah, two other things, Richard. One is what activity is happening today is data collection. A big part of integration of LIDAR is training the AI and integrating to the software. And that's what's been unpredictable in terms of conclusion of those activities. And then secondly, we just came through a major supply chain audit in the last six months and really Digging in, in some cases down to glass and sand, where raw materials and intermediate components are coming from just to make sure that they have options on the supply chain side. We've been very busy with those two activities of late.
Richard Shannon
Okay, great detail there, guys.
Matt Fish (Chief Executive Officer)
Thank you. Second one is just on the general customer engagement here. Glad to see the customer count moving up nicely here from 1621 here. I asked roughly the same question a couple different ways here, one of which is just on the customer count. If you can elaborate and describe which end markets the incremental 5 have come from here and then where would you describe where the biggest dynamics around engagement have been going that are filling the early part of the pipeline here as well? Yeah, I mean, I think if I would, you could probably do the math. But the, if you take those new five, they're pretty much spread evenly across all the market segments we mentioned during the prepared remarks. I'm going to take a look at Connor Tierney here for the second part of the question.
Connor Tierney (Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, I mean, look, I think defence obviously, as Matt mentioned, is a big driver and we're seeing a lot of interest. And it's not just in the defense sector, I would say it's also in the commercial aviation space as well. So we have some customers in that particular vertical as well. And I think the unifying factor is high performance, range, resolution and then obviously the ability to tune the scan pattern. And I think what's interesting is even in the defense sector, customers have different needs, different use cases. And so this is really where the tunability of the sensor, the ability to customize the scan pattern becomes really important. And even in some cases, for even just one use case, there might be different variants or different kind of performance factors that the customer is trying to solve for. It could be long range, even shorter range, increasing the frame rate. So the ability to just, just dial up, dial down the sensor is really important. And I think that when we're chatting with customers and we're chatting with investors, one thing that we really try and guide people on is when you look at our sensor, think about it as a performance bucket and you can kind of basically adapt that performance bucket to what you want to achieve. Right. So if that means going longer range, you can put the performance there. If it means higher frame rate, you can do that. And so giving that level of customization that you otherwise can't get in the marketplace.
Richard Shannon
Okay, probably my last question here is on Optus. So your press release mentioned this live in an active California intersection. I think I saw something on maybe your LinkedIn page not too long ago, which is great to see. Which is a good excuse for me to ask about general maturity and kind of breadth of engagement pipeline with, with Optus here where you're seeing this in terms of applications set in geography, this
Matt Fish (Chief Executive Officer)
would be a great update. Thank you. Yeah, again I think it covers a fair part of our market segments and in the remarks we talked about we're seeing a growing number of customers. The trend is definitely a, we're looking for a partner in perception and sensing and data analytics that's becoming a bigger part of our pipeline. The examples that we pointed out, for example the traffic intersection, we also mentioned the completion of a BoC out in Australia with we call it Smart Intelligent Traffic Systems where we were tracking for fleet management, company trucks going in at way stations and payloads and things like this. And again we're seeing, as we're talking with those customers, they don't know a lot about LiDAR. They just came to us and said well we tried working with an integrator that does cameras and radar and it doesn't work. Can you help us make it work? And we're seeing more and more of those type of customers where their level of sophistication and knowledge of the underlying sensor piece isn't quite there and they just want help to get an end to end solution. It's a growing part of that number that's increasing maturity. We've been out in the wild for almost a year now on that second example and a few months on the first one. We're going to see more intersections going online this year. So I think things are maturing nicely and you can definitely expect to see a higher percentage of those end to end solutions coming in the back half of the year here.
Connor Tierney (Chief Financial Officer)
And just one thing to add, you know, I think there's really what makes us unique in the ITS space, especially when it comes to intersections. One thing we're learning is there's a dilemma zone and that's, you know, maybe looking back 100 meters from the stop bar and the fact that we have the range and capabilities to do that is a differentiating feature in the solution that we're offering and that's something that definitely getting positive feedback from the dots. It's something that nobody else can do right now. So that's a classic case where we built a solution and we're leaning into our capabilities and performance factors and fearing increasingly the narrative is why the other sensors just couldn't see far enough really that simple. So I think customers are going beyond, they're looking more towards next gen lidar solutions, high performance solutions that can give them that level of range and, and customization that they need.
Richard Shannon
Makes a lot of sense. Last quick question, Connor, since I didn't hear your prepared remarks, just wanted to make sure that or ask whether you're still using the same language used on the last earnings call about seeing an acceleration in the second half of the year. Is that still your thought process there? Thank you.
Connor Tierney (Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, for sure. Look, I think we're definitely going to see an inflection in the revenue. I think we're already seeing more units in the pipeline here for Q2 and we think that trend is going to continue on into Q3 and Q4. So I think all in all, yeah, we're still guiding to that narrative.
Richard Shannon
Okay, perfect. That's all for me, guys. Thank you.
Matt Fish (Chief Executive Officer)
Thanks, Richard.
OPERATOR
If you would like to ask a question, please press star key, then number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star key, then number one again. We will pause for a minute for the questions to come in.
Matt Fish (Chief Executive Officer)
Hey, operator, I think it's okay. We can wrap it up if there's nothing else.
OPERATOR
That will conclude our question and answer session. I will now turn the call back over to Matt Fish for closing remarks.
Matt Fish (Chief Executive Officer)
Thank you all for your time today and for your continued interest in AI. We remain focused on executing against our commercial pipeline and converting this momentum into a durable revenue ramp. And we look forward to updating you on our progress next quarter. Thank you.
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