Pony AI Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to Pony AI, Inc.' 's first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the management's prepared remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded, and a webcast replay will be available on the company's investor relations website. at ir.pony.ai. I would now turn the call over to your host, George Hsiao, Head of Capital Markets and Investor Relations at Pony AI. Please go ahead, George.

Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today for Pony AI's first quarter 2026 earnings call. Earlier today, we issued a press release with our financial and operating results. which is available on our Investor Relations website. An earnings presentation, which we will refer to during the conference call, can also be accessed and downloaded on our Investor Relations website. Running on the call are Dr. James Peng, Chairman of the Board and CEO, Dr. Tiancheng Luo, CTO, and Dr. Liu Wang, CFO of the company. They will provide prepared remarks followed by a Q&A session. Before we begin, please refer to the safe harbor statement in our earnings release, which applies to this call as we'll be making forward-looking statements. Please also note that we will discuss non-GAAP measures today, which are more thoroughly explained and reconciled to the most comparable measures reported under GAAP in our earnings release, available on the Investor Relations website and filings with SEC and Hong Kong Stock Exchange. I will now hand it over to our Chairman and CEO, Dr. James Peng. Please go ahead.

Thank you, George. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining our Endings Call. We kicked off 2026 with an amazing first quarter. This strong start defines our growth momentum for the whole year. Let me start with the highlight. I'm proud to report that in Q1 2026, our total revenue grew by 45% year-over-year, and we also achieved record high quarterly robo-taxi revenue. Specifically, our robo-taxi revenues grew nearly 400%, powered by a more than 50% surge in fare charging revenues. Our operational momentum is accelerating across the board. We have scaled our Robotech fleet to exceed 1,700 vehicles and amplified this expansion through a massive surge in user adoption. Now, our registered users grew more than 200% year-over-year in China. In fact, our weekly average paid orders so far in May grew more than 100% compared to the beginning of the year. Lastly, we continue to expand our operating area, currently broadening our service footprint into downtown Guangzhou. Globally, we have been advancing our operations in the capital of Croatia, realizing Europe's first commercial robot taxi service. Looking at our overall Q1 results, I'm thrilled that our strategic and execution modes translated directly into our exponential growth in Robotaxi and fare charging revenues. By scaling our fleet, user base, and paid order volume, we have achieved consistent month-over-month growth this year. This is a remarkable achievement as Spring typically is a low season for ride hailing. Our dual engine strategy, that is focusing on both China and the global market, and the joint deployment model started unlocking new and diversified revenue streams. China market remains our primary growth engine, where we have secured a dominant lead We are steadily ramping up our domestic fleet while simultaneously broadening our operational footprint. We expanded our operation in Guangzhou from Nansha and Panyu districts into Haizhou district, which is the heart of Guangzhou that covers high demand areas like Canton Tower, the Pazhou CBD, and the Canton Fair complex. In Shenzhen, we have been continuously increasing the size and the density of our fleet in Nanshan and Bao'an districts, the city's two busiest areas. For key transportation hubs, we are now providing comprehensive airport transfer services across Beijing, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou. Our international expansion is also gaining traction. We have now established a presence in nine countries and started services to the public in four overseas markets, including Croatia, Qatar, Singapore, and South Korea. In the capital of Croatia, Zagreb, we realized the first Robotaxi commercialization in Europe. In the Middle East, our footprint in Dubai and Qatar continues to expand. currently initiating driverless deployment in Dubai. These achievements serve as proof that our model can be applied smoothly across multiple regulatory and operational environments, ultimately creating solid revenue streams. As for the joint deployment model, we consistently make significant strides Because of our technology leadership, our operational success, and our commercial maturity, partners increasingly recognize us as their preferred collaborator. We have seen more partners from both domestic and international markets join forces with us, starting to contribute sizable revenue in Q1. Our Robotech's success is continuously driven by our innovation and execution, which helps us to achieve a large-scale fleet, excellent technology and operation, and superior user experience. Moving forward, we will focus on reinforcing these areas to expand market share and cement our industry leadership. Operating a scaled fleet with consistent stability is a powerful testament to our technology and operational maturity. As we scale, we are supercharging our growth engine. We continue to build competitive barriers and trust from policy makers and fortify our brand position at the forefront of user man share. Currently, we are accelerating the rollout of Gen 7 vehicles across Toyota, Beijing Auto, and Guangzhou Auto, exceeding 1,700 robo-taxi vehicles. At the Beijing Auto Show last month, we debuted our 2027 version of the robo-taxi for domestic markets. This upgraded version will achieve further bond cost optimization to less than 230,000 RMB. This competitive pricing facilitates rapid scaling of the Robotaxi fleet for the years to follow. Safety has always been the foundation of our company, which is ensured by our technological and operational advantages. Our industry-leading L4 technology, vehicle-level intelligence, and resilient fleet management help us to maintain uncompromised safety. This proven mastery of highly complex scenarios enable our robo-taxis to navigate peak rush hours, dense urban areas, and bad weather conditions, satisfying surging user demand. We have moved beyond a novel experience into a go-to daily transportation choice. The results speak for themselves. Our robotic taxi fares maintain a premium over the entry-level ride-hailing services. Despite this premium pricing, demand remains exceptionally robust, particularly during peak hours. Notably, our weekly average paid orders so far in May increased by more than 100% compared to the beginning of the year, significantly outpacing industry-wide growth. Beyond that, we are continuously optimizing ground operations from charging efficiency to dispatching algorithms. This, in turn, boosts our fleet utilization and reduce operational cost. Now let me move to our robotruck business. Our Gen 4 robotruck is slated for mass production in the second half of the year, with pre-production vehicles currently rolling off the production line. I'm also pleased to share that in Q1, robotruck revenues were up 31% year-over-year. This was driven by scaling up long-haul operation. We also strive to expand our addressable market across multiple fronts, particularly in intra-city urban logistics. To this end, we launched our L4 autonomous light truck in April, leveraging our fully automotive grade and fully redundant level four robo-taxi architecture. In terms of intelligent solutions, a business we recently renamed from licensing and applications to better reflect our expanding business in this segment. Field one, the ADC, Essentially, the autonomous domain controller shipment in this segment surged by over 500% year-over-year. This was mainly driven by domain controller deployment in low-speed delivery applications. 2026 is off to a strong start for Pony. We have achieved supercharged revenue growth in all three business lines, without any compromise in safety. Since the first day of our founding, we have been committed to provide safe and reliable autonomous driving services. It is our deepest moat, and it's now the perfect stage for Pony to demonstrate what a decade of rigorous engineering looks like. Our fourfold RoboTaxi revenue growth is fueled by accelerated user adoption in domestic Tier 1 cities and revenue contributions from our joint deployment model, both domestically and globally. Reflecting this powerful commercial momentum, I am now raising our 2026 annual target that we forecasted earlier this year. Upgraded fleet target. We are now on a clear path to surpass a fleet size of 3,500 vehicles, which is an upward revision from our initial 3,000 target. Second, accelerated revenue growth. We are now lifting our robo-taxi revenue target higher to more than three and a half times from our previous target of tripling. Third, scaling our domestic and overseas prices. As we continue to accelerate the scaling up in our existing markets, we are firmly confident to expand our footprint to over 20 cities, both domestically and globally. As an industry leader, our mission goes beyond our own role. We are here to lead the development of autonomous driving, that have sustainable societal benefits. By providing a safe, driverless technology that is safe and profitable at scale, we are building the future of mobility that the world can trust. With that, I'll hand it over to CTO Tien-Tien Lo to go over the technology that's powering our leadership. Tien-Tien, please go ahead.

Thank you, James. Hello everyone, this is Tiancheng. Our strong start in 2026 fully proves our solid technology foundation. Looking at our scale, our Robotaxi fleet now surpasses 1,700 vehicles, and Q1 Robotaxi revenue skyrocketed by nearly 400% year-over-year, hitting an all-time high. Building on this robot's growth momentum, we are raising our full-year target to over 3,500 vehicles and revenue goes through three and a half times from the level of last year. This gearing up is driven by our proven capability to expand rapidly in high-value markets. By successfully entering the downtown core of Guangzhou Haizhou District and launching Europe's first commercial robotic service, we demonstrated our true technology leadership. only a tech leader can deploy free so quickly into this high-value, ultra-complex urban areas. Because our technology navigates this environment safely, more users choose to call our robot taxis, and more partners want to collaborate with us. It is this demonstrated capability that gives us the confidence to up-size our scale. Another clear testament was our performance during a series of concerts held in Guangzhou early this month. This event attracts tens of thousands of attendees around the stadium. I'm very proud that Pony's Robotaxi officially became a government-recommended transportation choice for the peak post-concert crowds. We pulled this off because we can master this level of extreme localized demand seamlessly. Being integrated into an official local transit traffic plan proves that the authorities highly trust our safety and operational capability. Ultimately, mastering this dense high traffic environment demands a leap in top-tier engineering by orders of magnitude. It comes down to three core technical pillars. An exceptional training program, robust field operational redundancy, as well as safe and efficient fleet management. Many years ago, we realized a critical truth. The public demands a much higher safety standard for L4 driverless robot taxis than for human drivers. This means when human drivers make a mistake, society accepts it as a normal part of daily life. But if an AI driver makes a mistake, the public trust will be negatively impacted. This understanding shaped over tech spec years ago. We knew we could not achieve true L4 by simply learning from human-driving data. More importantly, we knew we could not solve L4 through a simple scaling law like that of a large-language model, meaning just increasing parameter size and data volume. Learning from human driving data and scaling up parameters can give you a decent L2 driving system, but that level of AI is only good enough for L2 assistance driving when a human acts as a backup. It can never work for large-scale L4 robot taxis because it cannot significantly beat human safety levels. Driving is very different from AI coding. In coding, The AI does not need to make decisions with ultra-low latency. And the first output does not need to be perfect. The AI can try, fail, and fix errors multiple times using an agent framework, competitors, and test environments. Humans expect to see a final result except multiple rounds of trial and error. But for an AI driver, the model output must be instant and correct on the first try. Therefore, we started using reinforcement learning and world model years ago. Today, this approach allows our robotaxi to drive much safer than humans, especially in complex areas. This early batch gave us a massive first-move advantage, allowing us to rapidly deploy our robotaxi in high-value markets globally. However, for a true L4 vehicle, Achieving safety just at an algorithmic level is not enough. If a system downgrades and causes an accident, or simply stops dead on a high-speed road to wait for rescue, the public will not accept it. That is why every single Pony's Robotaxi features a full-stack, multi-layer redundancy architecture for both software and hardware. This gives us full operational capability. If any component fails during a trip, the system stays fully functional. The car will continue to drive safely to the secure spot and pull over, avoiding traffic congestion and rear-end crashes. Furthermore, our car can drive normally even when there is no network or GPS signal, both of which can easily drop in urban environments. We also do not rely on high-definition maps For example, even when road layout or landmark markings change significantly, or even if we need to drive in the opposite lane, our system adapts and navigates safely based on real-time road detection. We also detect any event instantly. Our cars are encrypted with impact sensors, so the system knows immediately if a collision occurs or stops the vehicle right away. We also detect hardware faults, software failures, and network instability instantly to ensure driving safety. We even have specialized water weighting sensors to make sure our cars do not enter deep puddles that could cause damage. As our operation expands, keeping the entire fleet safe becomes just as critical as a single-rope taxi safety. To achieve this, We scale our intelligence into citywide safety net, protecting our large-scale operations through three strong lines of defense. The first line is prevention. We have a dedicated safety team to systematically eliminate risk from the very beginning. We use technical design to stop safety issues before they happen, including risks from human errors or cyber attacks. For example, our remote assistance only provides high-level guidance they do not control the car. The onboard module on the vehicle is responsible for any collision or accident avoidance. This ensures a remote assistant cannot cause an accident through wrong input or network delay. The second line is detection. If demand stacks and all vehicles end up heading in the same direction, our smart detection system ensures they don't arrive at the same section all at once. but rather ride one after another. If a road is blocked or congested, our system will also detect it instantly and notify the whole fleet to avoid making the traffic worse. The third line is response. We establish dedicated ground support teams. If a vehicle encounters any issue on the road, our rescue personnel will arrive at the scene within minutes to handle the situation immediately. In short, our technology makes our operations safe, and this allows the operation to be built over an automated mode. Because we choose the right foundation from day one, and we now have the unique capability and first-mover advantage to rapidly expand in high-value markets, By the end of this year, we target to extend our fleet to over 3,500 vehicles across more than 20 cities. This massive scale will allow us to unblock even greater commercial value while continuing to deliver the first most trusted L4 Robotech service both domestically and globally. This concludes my prepared remarks. I will now pass the call to our CFO, Dr. Leo Wang, Leo, please go ahead.

Thank you, Tianchen. Hello, everyone. This is Leo. I will focus on year-over-year comparisons for the first quarter of 2026, unless otherwise noted. For detailed financials, please refer to our earnings release. 2026 is the year where our commercialization strategy translates into remarkable financial performance. This quarter, total revenues reached a record of $34.3 million, representing a 145% increase from $14 million in the same quarter last year. The triple-digit top-line growth was driven by robo-taxi revenue growth of 395% and the intelligent solution growth of 246%. We are also capturing compounding benefits as we extend our autonomous driving technology from Robotaxi into Robotruck and other partners along the value chain. Diving deeper into Robotaxi, this segment continues to serve as our core growth engine. This quarter, we reached a record high Robotaxi revenue of $8.6 million, grew by nearly 400%. compared with $1.7 million in the first quarter of 2025. As James mentioned, three key elements have helped Pony to achieve a leadership mode in RoboTaxi operations. These are skilled fleet, excellent technology and operations, as well as superior user experience. Pony's RoboTaxi has become a popular service that has captured user mindshare. And this is now reflected in our financial numbers. Specifically, our fair charging revenues delivered an exceptional growth of 456%. This impressive increase was driven by several compounding factors. We continue to add more vehicles and expanding into more regions, especially to core downtown areas with higher economic values. Operating metrics reflect our growing capacity and the strong user demand. For example, our weekly average paid orders so far in May grew more than 100% compared to January. Registered users increased more than 200% year over year, and our daily order growth rate continued to outpace the industry average. What makes this strong growth trajectory even more remarkable is our pricing power. Even after discount, our effective fare rate per kilometer remains above entry-level pricing on ride-hailing platforms and is on par with the standard express tier. Our demand remains robust and is growing at a very fast speed. We believe this is a clear reflection of the superior ride experience and the robust technology we deliver. especially during peak hours and in traffic-heavy downtown areas. On the cost side, we continue to make good progress on both operating costs and the bump cost front. Ponies combined depreciation and operating costs per vehicle are already among the most competitive globally. And this is achieved while operating in the busiest downtown area during the morning and the evening peak hours, under most demanding traffic conditions. By leveraging operational efficiency, we continue to drive operating costs even lower and are also on track to bring robo-taxi bomb costs below 230,000 RMB by mid-2027 in the domestic market. Together, these two levers, declining operating costs and the lowering bomb costs, will further enhance our robo-taxi margins as we scale the fleet. Aside from fair charging revenues, our joint deployment model has started to contribute meaningful revenues with both domestic and overseas partners. Such a model will enable more efficient use of capital in fleet deployment. Specifically, as a global technology enabler, we successfully launched the first commercial robot taxi service in the city center of Zagreb, Croatia, together with our local partners. Combined with our expanding operations in China, this is a strong testament to the execution of our dual-engine strategy. Turning to robotruck, robotruck service revenue grew 31% to $10.2 million this quarter, up from $7.8 million in the first quarter of 2025. This growth was driven by the addition of more trucks and the expansion of our diversified client base, reflecting increasing demand from downstream logistic clients in the long-haul business. We continue to see our industry-leading ATOM driving technology expanding into wider use cases, for example, long-haul trucking and intra-city logistics. Looking ahead, with the launch of Level 4 ATOM slide trucks and the Gen 4 robot truck, We're firmly on track to deliver even better autonomous driving trucks with lower cost, superior driving performance, and wider use cases, expanding to a wider addressable market. Our intelligent solution segment, formerly the licensing and application segment, delivered a remarkable growth of 246%, reaching $15.5 million in the first quarter of 2026. up from $4.5 million in the first quarter last year. This exceptional performance was mainly fueled by strong sales of ATOM domain controllers. Such strong growth is yet another testament to the opportunities of our ATOM driving technology as we empower other customers along the value chain. Moving to cost and margin, total cost of revenue was $28.7 million, translating to a gross margin of 16.2%. Total operating expenses were $63.9 million, a modest increase of 9.5%. On a non-GAAP basis, operating expenses were $59.3 million, representing a 20.2% increase. Such commitments especially in R&D, have helped us to maintain our technology leadership and will effectively drive down our bond costs. Loss from operation was 58.3 million U.S. dollars, remaining relatively flat compared to 56 million U.S. dollars in the first quarter last year. Net loss was 53.5 million U.S. dollars compared to 37.4 million U.S. dollars in the first quarter last year. The increase was mainly attributable to the realization of investment income that occurred in Q1 2025, coupled with a modest increase in operating expenses. Excluding the impact from this investment realization, the underlying loss amount remained broadly stable. It's worth noting that the loss from operation margin narrowed drastically. from negative 401% in the first quarter of 2025 to negative 170% this quarter. Similarly, our net loss margin narrowed from negative 267% to negative 156% year-over-year. The narrowing loss margin trend demonstrates our operating leverage driven by the rapid revenue growth and the gradual realization of commercial scale benefits. Turning to our balance sheet, cash and cash equivalents, short-term investments, restricted cash, and long-term debt instruments for wealth management stood at 1.4 billion U.S. dollars as of March 31, 2026. This compares to 1.5 billion U.S. dollars as of December 31, 2025. We continue to maintain an exceptionally robust financial position with ample dry powder to execute our strategy. Net cash used in operating activities was 74.2 million U.S. dollars this quarter, compared to 54.2 million U.S. dollars in the first quarter of 2025. The increase was primarily due to an increase in the accounts receivable resulting from substantial sales revenue increase of Atom Driving Domain Controller. along with the increase of non-GAAP loss from operation. Capital expenditures were $12.5 million this quarter, compared to $4.9 million in the first quarter last year. The increase was primarily due to Gen 7 vehicle production for the quarter and the procurement of vehicle components for future manufacture and investments in data center and servers. We believe 2026 will prove to be a defining year for the industry, and we are confident in our ability to outperform the industry in operational and financial execution. With our solid Robotaxi operational excellence, continuous bond cost optimization, increasing partner interest, and a strong cash reserve, we are highly confident in accelerating our path towards sustainable, profitable growth for our shareholders. I will now turn the call over to the operator to begin our Q&A session. Thank you.

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then 1 on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed, and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. For the benefit of all participants on today's call, please limit yourself to one question. If you have more questions, please re-enter the question queue. If you ask a question in Chinese, please repeat them in English. The first question today comes from Xiaoyi Li with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks for taking my question and congrats on the strong quarter. Just one from me. I'd like to ask about the regulatory environment. We've seen quite a bit of movement on the policy side for the robotics sector, both in China and overseas. So I was hoping you could share your perspective on how this evolving regulatory landscape is shaping up. And more importantly, how you see it impacting Pony AI's business or your competitive positioning going forward? Thank you.

This is James, and I'll take this question. So as far as I know, most of the policy discussions, both domestically and globally, are actually centered on the safety operation of Robotaxi. As you all know, safety is the cornerstone of the autonomous driving industry. Therefore, I would consider the safety discussion and the result of standardized safety or even higher safety measures are beneficial for the long-term stable development of the industry. As Tony, we have had many years of experience of successfully operating a large fleet and have the experience working with regulators to have a healthy, more transparent environment. Especially in China, we have built a deep trust with regulatory authorities, and we consider that we will continue to work hand in hand with the regulators to safely bring autonomous driving to the public. Back to the safety itself, as Tianci mentioned, we have established a full lifecycle safety management for both autonomous driving vehicle itself and also the fleet operation. Every vehicle features a fully redundant architecture with fair operational capability. That is, our vehicles actually will always safely pull over, even during an extreme case of system failure. Additionally, our fleet management has the capability to detect and respond to any unforeseen issues on the road. The whole system actually serves as a citywide safety net to prevent traffic jams and handle real-time road changes. This is actually how we ensure safety and scale. This highly sophisticated and robust safety system and also the safety track record have given us confidence to scale our business quickly. The current policy discussions and the policy updates do not have any direct impact on our business. In contrary, We are, as you see during the prepared remark, I have actually raised our business targets for the whole year of 2026. We are continuing to push forward with our Gen 7 deployment, and we are making smooth progress towards our target in fleet size, revenue, and operational area expansion. So as I mentioned, there's no immediate impact. And I believe that in the mid to long term, actually, the current standardized regulatory environment will play directly to our advantage as we already established as the industry leader. It highlights once again that the complexity of operating RoboTaxes at scale in dense urban environment, which is exactly we have proven our capability. I think ultimately, these high standards will consolidate the markets, filter out the unqualified players, and further raise the entry barrier for the new players. And as a result, it will help the long-term growth of the industry. With this, I'll hand over to the operator.

The next question comes from Ming Sun Lee with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hi, James, and , congrats for the good results. So given you raised your robot taxi fleet size to 3,500 by the end of the year and also you raised revenue, could you elaborate more on the key drivers behind your upward revision for these two numbers. Thank you.

Thank you, Ming, for asking this question. This is Leo. I'll take this one. So the upward revision is definitely showing that we are encouraged by our strong commercial momentum, especially the result of Q1. To be honest, this is actually moving faster than we expected and it's reflecting many core areas in our robot taxi business. For example, we are seeing our domestic operation are accelerating. We are seeing the pickup in revenue in paid order volume and also in the user basis in all tier one cities in China. This is really a reflection that we are providing a qualified service non-stop in Shenzhen and in Guangzhou. And we are attracting more and more repeated users because we can provide a service even during peak hours with consistency, even during complex scenarios. And that eventually translates into more revenues. And the other point is how we make the UE breakeven milestone in Guangzhou and Shenzhen. This also serves as a proven case for future possibilities. And that's why we're seeing many of the potential partners now they have the real interest domestically and internationally to really participate in our joint deployment business model. This could be more efficient to use of our capital, but also means we could deploy more vehicles in different markets. So given all these facts and encouragement, that's why we have the confidence to push our robot taxi revenue growth target even higher to be 3.5 times of 2025. And also our free size to be 3,500 vehicles by this year end. And now I'll get back to the operator.

The next question comes from Wei Huang with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Oh, this is Wei from EB. Thanks for taking my question. So I have a question on robot calculations. You certainly launched the L4 Electron, the Beijing Auto Show. Can you explain the strategic considerations for launching this platform? Thank you for your comment on the expansion plans.

Thank you. Thanks, Wei. This is James, and I'll take this question. As you consider the... The company vision since our founding has always been autonomous mobility everywhere. And to us, the word everywhere actually has two implications. One is expanding our presence across both domestic and overseas markets. And the other is scaling our technology across different vehicle platforms for both the passengers and the freight transportation. So the launch of our L4 autonomous light truck actually aligns perfectly with our vision and our ambition. In the logistics sector, the value chain actually spans long-haul trucking, urban logistics, and the last mile delivery. We already established a robot truck division working on the long-haul logistics. And for the last mile delivery, We are not directly working on it, but we actually have already becoming the leading ADC provider. So the current, the recent launch of Level 4 Light Truck is actually, serves the purpose of completing one key segment in our full logistic portfolio. The platform for the Level 4 Light Truck also shares nearly identical software stack as our robotaxi. It can also fully utilize our existing operational infrastructure, such as remote assistance, the ground support networks, and even the cleaning charging facilities. This unified architecture creates a powerful synergy. It can actually further slash out our light truck operating cost by half. compared with the human-driven light truck fleet. Also, we can actually lower the operational overhead of our robot taxi service because we can share a lot of the background support. In terms of the current status, we are developing the level for light trucks, and it's already well underway. For example, we co-developed this level for electric light truck with CATL, and we are establishing a solid pipeline with some of the leading logistic companies for the future application of those trucks. In addition, we also started discussing with the regulators on the licensing front and also on the fleet management. So we expect the autonomous light truck to begin scaled operation early next year. With this, I'll get back to the operator.

The next question comes from Ting Song with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Thanks for taking my question. Congratulations on the result. My question is on the technology part. So regarding the VLA visual language action model in autonomous driving, could you please share more on Pony's strategy and your future expected technology path? Do you think the language part is still necessary? As we recently noticed, some supply chain players start to remove the language from their models. Thank you.

This is Tiancheng. I will take this one. Let me start from saying that the core of driving is the understanding of the intention of other road users and the response appropriately. By putting an intention layer into our on-board model training, we generate different intention combinations and we evaluate the possibility of all other traffic participants. This design ensures our on-board model always selects the safest route and have a plan ready for any event. even for low possibility edge cases. We believe language is not the essence of driving. Also, language models take too much computer power for a car. Instead, we believe intention is the real call for driving. When humans drive, they think about the intention of other cars, not natural language. Crucially, this intention data is hard to get from simple road testing. we must generate it by word model. We believe large language models or language layers do not help on the cars' inference side, where word model and generative data are essential for training. In fact, autonomous driving and large language models do very different tasks. A large language model agent, like a coding tool, does not need to have very low latency. It does not need to be perfect on the first try. It works in a low cost environment where it can try, fail, and fix mistakes inside the testing box. But the driving has zero room for mistakes. If you make a mistake, it is an accident. Therefore, our tolerance for air hallucination is zero. To solve this, we built a virtual driving environment in our world model. This allows the system to try and fail during the training stage, not on real road. During the real world inference stage on the car, our model does not pick the single highest possibility path. Instead, it chooses the action that ensures safety under any probability. With this, back to the operator.

The next question comes from Jeff Chung with Citi. Please go ahead.

Hello, James, Tiancheng, Leo, thank you and congratulations. With your record-breaking first quarter results, how should we think about the balance between sustaining this high growth trajectory and your increasing strategic investments, especially when you are revising of the full-year targets? Thank you.

Thank you, Jeff. This is Leo. I'll take this question. Yes, we have a very good Q1 result, which proves that our robot toxic commercialization strategy, dual-engine strategy, is translating into accelerated top-line growth. And as you can see, that our top-line growth is actually outpacing our expenditure, which resulted in our operating loss margin narrowed quite a lot this quarter. Given all this momentum, we are confident to raise our full-year business target so that we can achieve even higher growth trajectory, which I think is really important for any growth company. In the meanwhile, we need to make strategic increased investment in certain areas, hence to keep our advantages in the industry. Using example is we are actually on track to decrease our total bond cost to be less than 230,000 RMB in the domestic market by mid next year. Through our R&D works and the deep collaboration with our OEMs. And we think that this definitely will be payback for our future deployment. It will attract more joint deployment business model partners. I think that this is a balancing regarding, again, the expenditure and also investment versus the trajectory of our growth. We are definitely putting the growth trajectory as our highest top priority. But we will always follow a value-driven and a disciplined approach for these front-loaded expenditures. Thank you. I'll get back to the operators.

The next question comes from Purdy Ho with Hoi Thai Securities. Please go ahead.

Thank you, management. Congratulations on the solid results and thank you for taking my question. I'd like to focus on your international expansion strategy. Given the recent commercial traction we're seeing overseas, could you provide more colors on your roadmap for global fleet expansion? Specifically, as you are evaluating different markets such as the Middle East, Europe, and Asia, what dictates your prioritization across these regions? Thank you.

OK, pretty. Thank you. This is James. Let me take this one. As my answer to the last question, our company vision is autonomous mobility everywhere. And you can see that global expansion has always been part of our strategic efforts. Our dual-engine strategy is rapidly accelerating our global expansion. As more international countries introduce regulations in supporting autonomous driving, and also there's many more partners want to work with us. Because of these two factors, we're seeing actually tremendous growth opportunities abroad. In fact, several international markets have already started contributing sizable revenues to us in Q1. So essentially, we're capitalizing on this window because our technology and commercial operations in China's tier one cities have already given us extensive experience in handling the most complex urban environments and also we have already achieved UE break-even in Shenzhen and Guangzhou. So this proven technical capability and cost advantage also because of the overseas policy opening. This is actually the underlying driving force for our accelerated global efforts. In terms of our international footprint, we are actually, as you mentioned, scaling quickly across all these key regions. We have now established a presence in nine countries and started global taxi services to the public in four overseas markets, including Croatia, Qatar, Singapore, and South Korea. In Europe, we're partnering with Uber and Vern to launch the region's first commercial robotaxi in Zagreb. In the Middle East, we're advancing fare charging services in Doha and initiating fully driverless operations in Dubai. In Asia, we have deployed public robot taxi services in Singapore and currently are conducting robust testing in Seoul, South Korea. So certainly moving forward, we'll continue to collaborate closely with all the local regulators and our trusted partners to accelerate our commercialization. We'll certainly double down on our investment and fully committed to expand our footprint to over 20 cities worldwide by this year. With this, get back to the operator.

The next question comes from Eugene Chiu with Macquarie Capital. Please go ahead.

Thank you for taking my question. In the earnings release, some of the capex in Q1 was for stock building of 80Ks. More of you could please update us on if there's any material input cost impacts for rising component costs. And I think Leo mentioned earlier that we're still on track for the BOM cost reduction to reach 230K by next year. So what areas are we targeting to reach this target? Thank you.

Yeah, I'll take this question. This is Leo. Thank you for asking this question. In terms of bomb cost reduction, we have always been using a holistic approach, meaning we are looking to all aspects regarding the base vehicle, regarding the autonomous driving hardware kit to get the overall bomb cost down along the road. So I think several factors will drive down our future bomb cost. First of all, we are deploying more and more vehicles. Our vehicle total fleet size will increase with a larger volume, especially with more and more deployment partnership coming in. We could give more quantity order to our suppliers. Definitely, they'll help us to negotiate with the pricing from our supplier. Second is now we already have our Gen7 vehicle on the street and accumulating millions of kilometers, giving us real data showing where we can refine our system, where we can simplify our system, where we can optimize our system. Based on these real data, definitely we can do our R&D work to further cut down our bomb cost. Of course, the supply chain itself has certain uncertainty. However, Pony has been dealing with this uncertainty along the years. So for this year, for example, the memory, of course, there is a certain shortage. However, we acted quickly last year to secure the supply for memories. So again, this is showing our capability on handling these shortages. That's why we're very confident to hit that farm cost target by mid-next year. Thank you.

As there are no further questions, I'd like to turn the call back over to the host for closing remarks.

Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact our investor relations team. We look forward to speaking with you in the next quarter.

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.