As Qiqi Mobility's 2025 forecast: ride-hailing dependency rises to 96%. What is the future path for Robotaxi commercialization?

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（Source: Company Research Office）

On March 31, “Robotaxi No. 1” as defined by Hong Kong listed company—Pony.ai (9680.HK)—released its 2025 annual report. The company’s total revenue was RMB 5.29 billion, up 114.6% year over year. The company’s net loss for the year was RMB 290 million, narrowing by 48.1% year over year; loss per share decreased from RMB 3.99 to RMB 1.49.

Judging by key figures, Pony.ai’s performance is quite impressive. But behind the RMB 5.3 billion in revenue, the company has not yet shaken off its reliance on traditional businesses, and it also faces challenges from heavy asset investment in its Robotaxi business.

Rising dependency on ride-hailing

In 2025, Pony.ai’s operating data grew at a high rate, and revenue rose in parallel. Full-year transaction volume (GTV) was RMB 6.426 billion, up 115.7% year over year; the number of orders was 233 million, surging 106.2% year over year; daily average orders increased from 309,600 in 2024 to 638,500; average transaction value per order was RMB 27.6, up RMB 1.2 versus 2024; and total revenue was RMB 5.29 billion, up 114.6% year over year.

Behind the doubled revenue, the company’s revenue structure is more imbalanced than in 2024.

Specifically, Pony.ai’s business is divided into three parts: mobility services, technology services, and fleet sales and maintenance.

Among these, the ride-hailing service under mobility services is the company’s most core source of revenue. Full-year revenue was RMB 5.09 billion, up 131.9% year over year, with its share rising from 89.2% last year to 96.4%.

Benefiting from the accelerated commercialization of AI data and model solutions, high-precision mapping, and other technology services, 2025 technology services revenue reached RMB 160 million, soaring 487.4% year over year. While the business delivered a significant increase, its revenue share was only 3.0%, meaning it still cannot become a “second growth curve.”

In 2025, due to a decrease in vehicle sales revenue, the fleet sales and maintenance business experienced a steep decline. Revenue fell to RMB 28.91 million, down 87.8% year over year; its share dropped from 9.6% last year to 0.5%.

Overall, although Pony.ai has the halo of a “Robotaxi No. 1” stock, it is still essentially a traditional ride-hailing platform, and its frontier technology business is almost negligible in revenue. At the same time, the sharp drop in fleet sales and maintenance further weakens the company’s potential for business diversification.

Profitability significantly improved

What makes investors happy in this annual report is that Pony.ai’s profitability improved dramatically, bringing loss per share down from RMB 3.99 to RMB 1.49, narrowing by 62.7%.

In 2025, Pony.ai’s gross profit was RMB 630 million, up 395.3% year over year; overall gross margin was 11.9%, up 6.8 percentage points from 2024. Among them, the gross margin of mobility services improved from 5.0% to 11.7%, which is the main reason for the significant increase in gross margin.

In the annual report, Pony.ai stated that after effectively improving penetration rates, it adopted a more prudent passenger reward policy to reduce subsidy spending; on the driver side, rewards decreased as the company optimized its driver cost structure through fleet maintenance and repair services, and the growth in order volume ensured drivers’ income expectations, reducing the need for additional incentives.

Simply put, Pony.ai reduced subsidies for both passengers and drivers. In business logic, this is equivalent to cutting service costs. While it boosts reported profits, it may also drain future growth potential and driver stickiness.

As for net profit, the net loss for the year was RMB 293 million, narrowing by 48.1% year over year; adjusted net loss was RMB 288 million, narrowing by 37.0% year over year.

The narrowing of net loss is not only due to the improvement in gross margin, but also because Pony.ai compressed back-end costs.

In 2025, Pony.ai’s general and administrative expenses decreased by 18.1% year over year, from RMB 136 million to RMB 111 million. The company said this was due to reduced listing expenses, lower share-based payment expenses, and economies of scale; research and development expenses decreased by 15.9% year over year, from RMB 141 million to RMB 119 million, because some R&D personnel costs were shifted to the technology services revenue cost.

Robotaxi may become a “cash-sink”

As the “Robotaxi No. 1” stock on the Hong Kong market, Pony.ai has long tried to package itself using a “tech stock” valuation logic.

However, reality is not like that. The more serious challenge facing Pony.ai comes precisely from its Robotaxi business, which it has high hopes for.

In 2025, revenue from innovative services such as Robotaxi was only RMB 5.76 million, making up just 0.1% of total revenue. Although revenue is minimal, its expansion pace has not stopped. In the first quarter of 2026, Pony.ai’s Robotaxi fleet capacity had expanded to about 600 vehicles, doubling versus the end of 2025.

According to Pony.ai’s “Robotaxi+” strategy, Pony.ai plans to build a Robotaxi fleet of over 10,000 vehicles with partners over the next 5 years, expand operations to more than 100 cities, and plans to invest RMB 1 billion to build 1,000 third-level operation and maintenance networks across 100 cities, supporting 100,000 Robotaxi operation and maintenance capabilities.

This shows that at the current stage, Pony.ai’s Robotaxi business is absolutely not a profit cash cow, but an unequivocal “cash-sink.” Whether it is fleet formation, early customized development, employee labor costs for safety personnel, compute power support from data centers, or long-term coordinated vehicle-road operation and maintenance—none of these can be supported without substantial capital expenditures.

Pony.ai is now in a bind: the traditional ride-hailing business is in a red ocean and has a low profit ceiling; technology services and Robotaxi do represent the future, but commercialization is slow, and in the short term they are unlikely to generate actual profits, with the risk that the loss exposures—narrowed with difficulty—could be torn open again at any time.

Especially worth noting, in 2025 the gross margin of technology services fell from 18.7% the previous year to 14.8%, a reduction of 3.9 percentage points.

Conclusion

In 2025, doubled revenue, nearly 4x growth in gross profit, and halved losses prove Pony.ai’s resilience. But capital markets prefer “sexy” stories. The story of traditional ride-hailing lacks appeal, and the as-yet-unscaled Robotaxi is not enough to ignite market imagination.

This mobility platform still needs to face a long and expensive commercialization test; the technology-mobility story it tells has not yet found a real profit foothold.

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