In December 2025, KnowMade, a globally renowned intellectual property (IP) research firm under Yole Group, released its LiDAR for Automotive Patent Landscape Analysis 2025, recognizing Hesai as a leader in the global lidar industry. In the report, Hesai ranks first among lidar companies in both total patent holdings and overall patent strength, and third globally behind Bosch and Waymo, underscoring the company’s sustained technological innovation and established leadership in the lidar market.
From 2021 to 2025, Hesai has been leading the industry in total patent portfolio, building a multi-country, multi-tiered patent network across key technologies, including lidar ASICs, optical systems, signal processing, and functional safety. As of November 2025, the company had accumulated a total of 2,071 granted patents and pending applications, maintaining the highest number lidar-related patents across key automotive and robotics markets worldwide.
Lidar IP Leadership 2021–2025: Hesai Ranks No.1 Among LiDAR Pure Players
Hesai’s Extensive Patent Portfolio Set Global Trends in the Lidar Technology
Patent Portfolio of Selected Lidar Companies
Since July 2021, Hesai has filed over 920 patent applications, forming 558 patent families, including 400 new invention patents. This portfolio is underpinned by a clear vision built on two pillars. First, the company is establishing a global patent protection network across all major markets, leveraging multiple international mechanisms, including the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), the U.S. patent system, and the European patent framework. Second, the company’s patents cover the entire lidar value chain, from emission (VCSEL) and reception (SPAD/SiPM, APD) to system integration, while securing leading positions in segments such as anti-interference, 1550nm technology, MEMS, metasurfaces, and AI. This leadership is not merely quantitative but reflects a systematic, forward-looking technological approach that provides critical IP support for continuous product iteration and reinforces its competitiveness on a global scale.
Global Leader in Anti-Interference Patents
Hesai Ranks First in Anti-Interference According to the Number of Patent Families
Driven by a strong focus on safety, anti-interference has become a core pillar of lidar reliability. KnowMade’s report recognizes Hesai as the industry leader in this area, holding 33 anti-interference patent families that ensure dependable performance in complex real-world environments. The company’s proprietary Intelligent Processing Engine (IPE) combines ultra-high-speed sampling at 24.6 billion times per second with intelligent filtering that removes over 99.9% of environmental noise. This significantly enhances perception accuracy under challenging conditions and enables reliable all-weather sensing regardless of lighting.
To further strengthen safety and detection reliability, Hesai has developed Addressable Photon Isolation (API) technology that enables independent control of each laser transmit and receive channel, mitigating blooming and ensuring high-precision point clouds even in challenging weather scenarios such as rain or fog.
Core Components Developed 100% In-House, Leading the Industry with Total SPAD/SiPM Patents
Additionally, Hesai also ranks first globally in patent holdings across three core lidar components: SPAD/SiPM detectors, VCSEL emitters, and APD detectors. In the SPAD/SiPM segment, the company’s patent portfolio is twice as much of the second-ranked company, Bosch, and up to forty times larger than those of other industry peers.
Hesai Tops Patents Holdings for APD, SPAD, SiPM, and VCSEL Components
After four generations of ASIC platform development, Hesai is the only lidar company in the world to develop all seven core components in-house, including its laser transmitter, receiver, driver, TIA, ADC, digital signal processor, and controller. Sixteen of Hesai’s in-house developed ASICs have received AEC-Q automotive qualification, with total deliveries reaching 185 million units, ranking no.1 in the lidar industry globally.
Leading the World in Lidar Patent Strength
“Patent strength” reflects a combination of factors, including the number of granted patents, forward citations, geographic coverage, and active patent families. The report names Hesai a world leader not only in patent quantity but also in overall patent strength. The company’s patent portfolio features a strength index of 2,549, an average family strength of 4.57, and a technological impact factor of 0.20, ranking third globally behind Bosch and Waymo.
Hesai Ranks Among the World’s Top Three in Patent Strength
In 2025, Hesai achieved a landmark year, delivering over 1.6 million lidar units, including 1.4 million lidars for ADAS and over 200,000 units for the robotics market. The company’s cumulative deliveries surpassed 2 million units in November, making Hesai the first lidar company worldwide to reach this achievement.
At CES 2026, Hesai announced plans to double its annual production capacity to 4 million units and the construction of a new factory in Thailand. The company also established a strategic partnership with Nvidia to advance large-scale deployment of L4 autonomous driving, marking a major step forward in the company’s global expansion.
Looking ahead to 2026, Hesai will maintain its focus on the automotive and robotics markets, advancing global smart mobility and embodied intelligence through continuous innovation and reliable large-scale production. As a critical “eye” for AI infrastructure, Hesai is dedicated to making safer, smarter perception capabilities a standard in the era of connected intelligence.
Read the full report here: https://www.knowmade.com/patent-analytics-services/patent-report/semiconductor-patent-landscape/sensing-imaging-patent-landscape/lidar-for-automotive-patent-landscape-analysis-2025/
