(Yicai Global) Jan. 18 -- Hesai Technology, a leading Chinese developer of three-dimensional light direction and ranging technologies, has filed to go public on the Nasdaq stock market.

In the prospectus the Shanghai-based company submitted yesterday, there is no information about how much it plans to raise through the initial public offering.

A quarter of the IPO proceeds will be invested in manufacturing capabilities, including building new plants and buying new production and testing gear, while 35 percent will be used for research and development of technologies such as next-generation application-specific integrated circuits and software solutions, Hesai said. The rest will go on potential investments and acquisition.

Hesai’s management team owns a collective 27.1 percent of the firm, corresponding to 77.9 percent of the voting rights, per the prospectus.

Lightspeed Opportunity and Lightspeed China Partners own 9.3 percent and 8.2 percent, equal to 2.8 percent and 2.5 percent of the voting rights. Baidu and Bosch each hold a 6.8 percent stake, or 2 percent of the voting rights. Xiaomi has 6.3 percent, and 1.9 percent of the voting rights.

Founded in 2014, Hesai has grown into a leading provider of lidar solutions for vehicles with advanced driver-assistance systems and autonomous driving features, last-mile delivery robots, street-sweeping robots, logistics robots, and robotics.

Revenue jumped 73 percent to CNY793.5 million (USD111.5 million) in the first nine months of 2022 from a year earlier, while the firm’s net loss shrank 5.3 percent to CNY165.5 million.

In 2019, 2020, and 2021, the company’s revenues were CNY348.1 million, CNY415.5 million, and CNY720.8 million, respectively. It had about a 60 percent share of the lidar’s autonomous mobility global market in 2021, according to Frost & Sullivan.

Hesai shipped 80,400 lidar units last year, bringing the total since 2017 to over 103,000. It boasts SAIC Motor, Changan Automobile, Li Auto, Jidu Auto, and other Chinese electric carmakers and consumer electronics firms that entered the EV industry among its clients.

Editor: Futura Costaglione