Aeva Technologies Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Aeva Technologies (NASDAQ:AEVA) reported third-quarter financial results on Wednesday. The transcript from the company’s third-quarter earnings call has been provided below.

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View the webcast at https://edge.media-server.com/mmc/p/5wa5rm32/

Summary

Aeva Technologies reported record quarterly revenue of $6.7 million in Q3 2026, driven by a 50% sequential increase in product shipments.

The company is expanding its manufacturing capacity to meet growing demand, particularly for its CoreVision LiDAR-on-chip module.

Aeva has achieved significant milestones in the automotive sector, including collaboration with Daimler Truck, successful VDA audit with a top European OEM, and progress with Nvidia’s Drive Hyperion platform.

The optical connectivity business is gaining traction, with commercial negotiations underway with a second customer and first revenues realized from ultra-high-power chipsets.

In the defense sector, Aeva’s 4D LiDAR has been selected by the U.S. Air Force and Navy for joint development, enhancing its footprint in mission-critical operations.

Aeva has also partnered with Micro-Epsilon for factory automation solutions, highlighting the versatility and scalability of its technology across industries.

The company maintains a strong liquidity position with $272.5 million available and an extended $125 million credit facility.

Management remains optimistic about continued growth, targeting 70% to 100% annual growth, and is investing strategically to secure supply capacity for future demand.

Full Transcript

Bo (Conference Facilitator)

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Bo, and I will be your conference facilitator. Today, I would like to welcome everyone to Aeva Technologies’ third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. During the opening remarks, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Following the opening remarks, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, today’s call is being recorded and simultaneously webcast. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Andrew Fung, Senior Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Please go ahead, Mr. Fung.

Andrew Fung (Senior Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Development)

Thank you, and welcome everyone to Aeva’s third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Joining on the call today are Soroush Salehian, Aeva’s Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, and Rupesh Maheshwari, Aeva’s interim Chief Financial Officer. Ahead of this call, we issued our third quarter 2026 press release and presentation, which we will refer to today and can be found on our investor relations website at investors.aeva.com. Please note that on this call we will be making forward-looking statements based on current expectations and assumptions, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. These statements reflect our views only as of today and should not be relied upon as representative of our views as of any subsequent date.

These statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. For a further discussion of the material risks and other important factors that could affect our financial results, please refer to our filings with the SEC, including our most recent Form 10-Q and Form 10-K. In addition, during today’s call we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe are useful as supplemental measures of Aeva’s performance. These non-GAAP measures should be considered in addition to, and not as a substitute for, or in isolation from, GAAP results. The webcast replay of this call will be available on our company website under the Investor Relations link, and with that, let me turn the call over to Soroush.

Soroush Salehian (Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer)

Thanks, Andrew, and good afternoon, everyone. Q3 was a standout quarter for Aeva Technologies, driven by growing demand for Aeva Technologies’ 4D LiDAR and optical solutions and our team’s ability to execute on our strong commercial momentum. Reflecting the ongoing scaling of our manufacturing, we achieved a new record quarterly revenue with product shipments growing by over 50% sequentially to also a new quarterly record. Aeva Technologies’ Unified Perception Platform and core silicon photonics technology continue to prove its power and versatility from enabling ADAS and higher levels of automation in automotive to a new win for precision manufacturing and our expansion to airborne autonomy in defense.

Our momentum in optical connectivity is also accelerating as we deepen our collaboration with our JDA customer and advance on other customer engagements, including entering commercial negotiations with a second customer. As indicated by record quarterly shipments in Q3, we are progressing on aligning manufacturing with our growing demand. We are installing additional manufacturing capacity for our CoreVision LiDAR-on-chip module and plan to continue to scale as we enter 2027 to further position Aeva Technologies to support customer deployments and commercial momentum.

Now let me highlight some of our recent achievements and business developments in the last quarter. Let’s start in automotive, where we are achieving important milestones that demonstrate the maturity, quality, and ability of Aeva Technologies to support our major automotive production programs and additional engagements in trucking. We continue to work closely with Daimler Truck and Torc on sensor integration for validation and other milestones towards the commercialization of Daimler Truck’s autonomous production program.

In support of this production work, we increased shipments of our production-intent Atlas sensors to Daimler Truck. These sensors are manufactured and tested at our fully automated assembly line at Jabil in North America and, as we continue to ready for Daimler Truck’s production program as well as others, we began shipping directly from this facility. I am pleased to share that we have successfully completed our development program with Bendix on an integrated multi-modality solution for commercial ADAS applications. Bendix is now working closely with multiple large commercial vehicle OEMs on securing production deals, and we are in negotiations with Bendix on a production supply agreement to support these OEM volumes. As we announced last quarter, Bendix is the industry leader in commercial vehicle ADAS and is using Aeva Technologies’ 4D LiDAR and perception software to develop its next-generation ADAS series production system.

This is an exciting expansion opportunity for Aeva Technologies and another example of how our unique silicon photonics architecture enables us to bring new levels of perception, a cost-effective and scalable solution even for ADAS applications where LiDAR has traditionally not penetrated yet in passenger vehicles. With the top-10 European OEM, we continue to ship our Advanced Ultra systems to the OEM and work jointly, very closely, on integration and stack development. I am proud to share that this quarter we also successfully passed the OEM’s VDA audit, a key milestone for commercial deployments. The VDA audit is the European automotive industry’s rigorous standard for evaluating product development and manufacturing processes. Aeva Technologies was also the first LiDAR company to successfully pass the VDA audit on the first attempt.

This is strong validation from an industry-leading OEM of the quality and maturity of the processes Aeva Technologies has in place and, along with other qualifications such as ISO 9001 and TISAX, points to Aeva Technologies’ commitment to meeting stringent automotive standards. Outside of these specific programs, we continue to progress with Nvidia and its Drive Hyperion platform, with a growing number of leading OEMs and industry players using it to develop L3 and higher autonomy for production vehicles. As announced earlier this year, Nvidia selected Aeva Technologies’ 4D LiDAR as its reference LiDAR sensor on this platform for markets outside of China. We have delivered the first unit and are working together on integrating and evaluating our 4D LiDAR data for OEM development and simulation.

As we deliver on milestones of Drive Hyperion, we continue to believe that Aeva Technologies, as the platform’s core LiDAR supplier ex-China, is in a strong position to secure additional program wins with the OEMs and together with Nvidia. Moving now to our optical connectivity business. Following the official launch last quarter, we continue to see growing traction and have advanced on multiple customer engagements, including with AI chip companies and optical solution providers to hyperscalers. In particular, we’re now entering commercial negotiations with a second optical customer for another hyperscaler deployment. Similar to our first JDA customer, this program has the potential for multiple millions of units in volume annually starting by 2028 and ramping from there.

Aeva Technologies’ accelerating momentum is driven by our ability to deliver ultra-high-power optical solutions at more than 600 milliwatts using technology that we have proven over the last decade and industrialized to meet the rigorous requirements for our automotive and industrial customers. One of the biggest bottlenecks facing AI data center build-outs is the limited supply and options for reliable high-power laser sources. This is especially the case for optical sources capable of delivering more than 200 milliwatts, which is critical to support the increasing bandwidth demands of AI data centers. Aeva Technologies’ technology foundation enables our solutions to achieve the required combination of high performance, demonstrated high yield, and proven reliability.

To support our momentum, we announced this morning an expanded portfolio of solutions, all built on Aeva Technologies’ common high-optical-power and silicon photonics technology. Our offerings now include ultra-high-power chipsets, multi-wavelength laser arrays, and multichannel external laser source modules. These provide our customers greater flexibility in integrating Aeva Technologies’ technology in the hardware stack and across successive generations of AI data center architectures, with the opportunity to win additional multi-hundred-million-dollar programs annually.

We are also working diligently to secure incremental capacity to augment our existing long-term supply agreements with our foundry and manufacturing partners as we pursue additional opportunities with other potential customers. We’re also progressing well with our first JDA customer, a leading provider of high-speed optical engines, where we are working together on integrating Aeva Technologies’ sources into an NPO solution for a major hyperscaler. We realized our first revenues in optical connectivity as we began shipping Aeva Technologies’ ultra-high-power chipsets to our JDA customer for system integration and validation. We continue to target qualifications with the hyperscaler starting by mid-2027 for planned commercial deployments as early as late ’27 and early 2028.

In addition, we are also expanding our collaboration with this customer to work together on leveraging the same platform that we are building for other interested hyperscalers. Aeva Technologies is also growing in defense, where the performance advantages of Aeva Technologies’ 4D LiDAR can be leveraged for mission-critical operations. In particular, I am honored to share that the U.S. Air Force, together with the U.S. Navy, have selected Aeva Technologies for joint development using our 4D LiDAR to enable new remote sensing and advanced air operations. This is because 4D LiDAR directly measures both the position and velocity of surrounding objects, which provides real-time situational awareness needed for autonomous aerial operations.

In addition, 4D LiDAR’s ability to operate without detection from night vision systems can support stealth operations. Besides our work with the U.S. Air Force, we are seeing significant momentum with leading primes and others to leverage Aeva Technologies’ technology for drone and additional aerial applications on land. Our partnership with Forterra continues to strengthen. We have been shipping a significant number of sensors for Forterra’s AGVs, which use Aeva Technologies’ Atlas LiDARs as part of its autonomous vehicle system, AutoDrive. This is for long-range and velocity sensing, vehicle positioning, and stealth operational capability in GPS-denied environments. We’re also actively pursuing new opportunities together where we can offer a differentiated joint solution for defense- and security-related applications.

Moving now to precision sensing, where we are growing our shipments for commercial programs with multiple industry leaders. As we just announced, Micro-Epsilon, a global leader in factory automation, has selected Aeva Technologies’ EVE high-precision technology to power their next generation of solutions for factory automation. Micro-Epsilon is a trusted leader by major companies across the world and ships more than 100,000 precision sensors annually for factory automation and automated quality inspection such as distance and thickness measurements.

Its sensors are used across a wide range of industries from automotive and robotics to electronics and semiconductor manufacturing. The future of factory automation requires sensing solutions that improve speed and accuracy. Aeva Technologies’ FMCW-based technology offers coaxial measurements at best-in-class speed and accuracy regardless of material, standoff distance, and lighting conditions. This enables fast, reliable, and precise measurements that can improve throughput, quality control, and costs in manufacturing.

As part of our multi-year supply agreement that we just signed, we have already received an initial order for multiple thousands of sensors from Micro-Epsilon, and we look forward to our collaboration together to deliver new capabilities for factory automation. In summary, we have been incredibly busy, with our results highlighting the broad uses and growing demand for Aeva Technologies’ solutions. Whether in automotive, defense, or factory automation, or AI data centers, we are executing, delivering to our customers, and expanding our market presence. I will now turn the call over to Rupesh to walk through our Q3 financial results. Rupesh, over to you.

Rupesh Maheshwari (VP Corporate Controller)

Thank you, Soroush, and good afternoon, everyone. Overall, Aeva Technologies’ Q3 financial results highlight our increasing shipments as we scale manufacturing to meet more of our growing demand across a broad range of markets, as well as some investments to support our significant momentum in optical connectivity. Specifically, revenue was 6.7 million in the quarter, which represents a new quarterly record for Aeva Technologies, including within this a new quarterly record in product shipments.

Non-GAAP operating loss was 27.7 million in Q3, which continues to be similar to prior year levels as we remain disciplined on operating expenses while scaling the business. Q3 gross cash use, which we define as operating cash flow less CapEx, was 30.6 million. We entered the quarter with total available liquidity of 272.5 million. In November, we extended the maturity of our 125 million facility for an additional two years. The facility remains fully undrawn and at management’s discretion to draw.

As demonstrated by growing adoption of Aeva Technologies’ solutions from automotive and industrial to defense and optical, our commercial momentum is growing. We continue to believe our liquidity position and disciplined approach to spend enables Aeva Technologies to execute on our mission. With that, I will turn the call back over to Soroush for his closing remarks.

Soroush Salehian (Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer)

Thank you, Rupesh. In closing, Q3 was a strong quarter with record quarterly revenue and new wins, clear indications of the significant commercial momentum of our sensing and perception business and the expansive opportunity as we grow our optical platform. It is also clear validation of our execution and I want to thank the Aeva team for their ongoing dedication and contributions. As we head into the final quarter of 2026, we remain focused on the objectives we set this year, including delivering on our production customer milestones while securing additional wins, scaling manufacturing to support demand, and maintaining our financial discipline as we continue our growth and momentum. With that, let us now turn to Kunik.

Bo (Conference Facilitator)

Thank you very much, Mr. Salehian. And ladies and gentlemen, at this time if you do have any questions, please press star one. If you find your question has been addressed, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star two. Once again, star one. For questions this afternoon, we do ask that you please try to limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. We’ll go first today to Colin Rush with Oppenheimer.

Colin Rush (Analyst)

Thanks so much, guys, and congratulations on all the progress here. Can you talk about the complexity and depth of conversation that you’re having with incremental customers in the optical connectivity space? Just curious about how mature those conversations are and how quickly they might move into another JDA.

Soroush Salehian (Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, hi Colin, thanks for the question, I’m happy to answer that. So to be honest, the progress has been amazing and overwhelming. We have had a lot of traction in the outreaches that we’ve had, but also customer engagements as well as our current JDA program. So as you saw, we just announced a new portfolio of products that help us expand and broaden our offerings in the optical data center market. But specifically on the engagements, we are engaged with multiple of the leaders in AI chip companies, the hyperscalers, the likes we have mentioned in the past before, the likes of NVIDIA, the others, and also including some of the optical engine companies. And the opportunity obviously for each of these deals is quite massive.

I think what’s important is that we’re seeing—one of the reasons we’re seeing this traction solidify in a very quick manner, if you think about it from last period, it’s only been a few months since we announced our expansions business—is that we are able to deliver a proven capability with high-power sources, what we call the UHP, ultra-high power, now with these other products, the Spectra and MESA. And we see that actually when the customers go and test this, they see that it’s actually working and meeting the specs, which has been a big challenge for the market itself.

So this market is one that is not just there is a massive opportunity that’s been unprecedented, but there’s also a significant gap in terms of the actual solutions, technical capabilities, and availability. And I think Aeva is one of the very, very, very few companies that has been able to deliver on that, show that to them—the actual data, the reliability, and the performance that’s needed to meet those demands—which I think has resulted directly in the speed of our progress on the deals.

Obviously we need to deliver these modules to customers, they need to get into qualifications, there are those timelines that are set. But this is much faster than, let’s say, a typical program, especially in other markets. So we’re feeling really excited about that. That’s why we’re expanding offerings there. And each of these opportunities provide us with volumes that range in the multiple millions of units to get to multiple hundred millions of dollars of revenue opportunity.

So that’s why we are engaging this market. And I think from here on we’re hoping that our engagement, including this next phase of contract negotiations with the second customer, is going to move in a timely fashion and similar to what we’ve done in the past quarter.

Colin Rush (Analyst)

And I guess one of the biggest questions around that market is really about your ability to meet the volume demand. So can you talk about what sort of preparations you’ve got started already as you get a little bit more confidence in the viability and the concrete sales that start to emerge next year?

Soroush Salehian (Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, I think you’re talking about, like, basically the milestones from here on to get to qualification launch, correct?

Colin Rush (Analyst)

Yeah. In preparations to meet the volume. Right. From a manufacturing perspective.

Soroush Salehian (Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, so that’s a very good point. Yes. So I think you bring up a very important point, which is obviously it starts with the demand, which we’re seeing that’s very significant and important. Then it’s the actual locking the customers. Now we have the first JDA and we’re now engaged in multiple, and we have now a second customer on the line where we’re in contract negotiations. But of course from here it is very important to set up the supply, right.

I think Aeva, besides having the capability of actually meeting the performance requirements, we also have a unique approach in terms of our supply base. We provide offerings that may not always share the same, let’s say, foundry as some of the other folks that are captive or, you know, pretty loaded up already in the AI data centers. We have strategic relationships and agreements, long-term agreements with our partners in the foundry and fab space as well as our manufacturing partners.

We’ve already established those and strengthened those since the last quarter that allow us to have visibility of capacity and supply availability in the next multiple years, two to three years. We’re also in parallel now working to expand that supply capacity so we can really flex up the volumes as we are adding more and more customers. So that’s, I think, something that the work has been done, has been done and ongoing, and as we’re able to provide more updates also we will share on that.

So that’s, I think, an important topic where the supply capacity and availability—also showing that to the key customers—is important, and we have already been doing some of that, which is why, you know, those JDA customers already were comfortable enough to give us that first agreement board and go from there.

Colin Rush (Analyst)

Thanks so much, guys.

Bo (Conference Facilitator)

Thank you. We’ll go next now to Joseph Moore of Morgan Stanley.

Mason (Analyst)

Hi. You have Mason here. On behalf of Joe, I wanted to ask another question on the optical connectivity business. As you move kind of from a single engagement, now talking about multiple engagements, multiple products, has your assessment on the level of investment required to this, has that changed at all over the last six or nine months? And can you give us any color on how Aeva internally just needs to change as a business in order to effectively, you know, go after this opportunity, especially given, you know, the size of the market and the size of some of the incumbents kind of competing in the space as well?

Soroush Salehian (Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer)

Sure, Mason. Yeah, happy to answer that. As you mentioned, I think it’s important how we structure so that we can, one, deliver on our existing programs across automotive, industrial and others. But also, you know, the reason we’re entering this market and expanding on it now is because it’s a massive opportunity, but also one that’s near term, right. So on your kind of first question of investments, yes, we are increasing some of our investments to make sure that we can go after and deliver on these very large customer opportunities and actual, you know, agreements that we have now, then also working on committing some of our supply capacity so that we can secure that. You know, and I mean you have probably heard that, you know, other folks talk about some of the sources from an availability standpoint being booked up till ’29 now.

So I think that provides us both an opportunity, but also important to be able to show that to our end customers the capacity that we have. So we are making some of those investments. We think that’s already part of our plans and as we have talked about some growth in our investment there that we’re doing, and we’re going step by step with the customers. But obviously where we have to invest in long lead or doing long-term agreements, we’re putting those in place now so we can have the capacity we need already for ’27 and then ramp up in 2028.

So that’s one. And then from a team structure, absolutely right. We have already defined a team, obviously led by Pradeep, to drive and lead the optical connectivity business. This is a separate team that is working through the product portfolio that we talked about, developing these UHP chipsets, the chip arrays, but also the Spectra and MESA platforms. And then as we expand on that—more on that—and we have already hired folks in this area, and we’re going to continue to do that, and that’s going to be its own team and business that’s going to continue to grow.

And likewise, as we go along, we’re going to also be looking at some adjustments across the company to make sure that we have the right structure for all the other business that we have across automotive, industrial, and have that focus in a few key areas that really help us expand and grow and capture the market with our perception platform.

Bo (Conference Facilitator)

Thank you. We’ll go next now to Mark Delaney with Goldman Sachs.

Mark Delaney (Analyst)

Yes, good afternoon. Thank you for taking the questions and good to hear about the progress in the data center space. I just have one on the auto market to start. I was Hoping you could give a bit more color and context on the engagement with the European top 10 OEM and if there’s been any changes in when and how that OEM may deploy your LiDAR. I know you mentioned that Aeva’s development is going very well, but if you could put that into context with the broader program as well as just the volatility in the European auto market that’s been happening with the competition from the Chinese OEMs.

Soroush Salehian (Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, Mark, sure. I think first of all, as I mentioned on the call, we’re making progress really well across automotive, and I’ll touch on that. But to answer your question first on the top 10 European OEM, you know, obviously in the past quarter we have been working—every day we work very closely with them—but in the past quarter we’ve had some important milestones including achieving the VDA audit, passing on the first attempt. And on the OEM itself, they’re on a very accelerated timeline to get this product to market.

We’re working very closely to enable that. And there is obviously critical functionality for autonomy that I think our technology helps enable, and that is why that is a core part of the strategy for the OEM in terms of their feature set. You talked about the overall competition in the auto market and the volatility. I think the OEM sees the ability to bring a new technology that really enables Level 3 automation on the roads on the highway, and then eventually the urban, as a critical differentiator. And that’s why the timing of this program and the importance of this program is very high. And Aeva is right at the center of providing that capability for the non-China market. So the teams are progressing really well, working together.

We feel good about the OEM’s timeline; they’re on track for their launch, and we have some important milestones coming up in the next number of months as well that we’re working very closely to get delivered, but overall it’s progressing really well. We’re also working together on the next generation already, which we see is going to continue to expand the business and also, in turn, to a number of the high-volume models as well. That’s on the top 10. And then maybe just on the other automotive side, the last quarter also we progressed really well with the other side of the market, including with trucking. We completed a development program with Bendix, and that was important to be able to showcase that our sensors can fit in for the ADAS applications. Working with other modalities together using our sensor and software, we were able to showcase and prove that the additional functionality, for example automatic emergency braking or passenger braking functions, are adding value and that’s something that’s important.

And Bendix already is working now with multiple OEMs on the next phase, which is the production deals, and we are actually now entering the commercial negotiation contract phase with Bendix as well. So multiple engagements there—that’s also advanced.

Mark Delaney (Analyst)

Thanks for all that color. My second question was on the financial outlook for 2026. Is the company still tracking into that 30 to 36 million revenue range that was previously communicated and any initial thoughts on 2027 and whether the framework of roughly 100% annual growth per year is applicable for 27? Thanks.

Soroush Salehian (Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, thanks for your question. We feel good about the quarter. The business is getting momentum and we had a record product shipment in Q3 as you’ve seen in our press release. We also launched our optical connectivity offering and signed contracts with Micro-Epsilon and a defense customer. We are also seeing a lot of strong inbound interest and actively working with a number of potential opportunities. So all of this gives us confidence in the opportunities ahead.

Bo (Conference Facilitator)

Thank you. Thank you. We’ll go next now to George Yannarikis at Canaccord.

George Yannarikis (Analyst)

Hi everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. I’d like to expand upon the previous question a little bit, and I’m not asking for explicit financial guidance. As we attempt to frame your multiple design wins and all the traction that you have, how should we think about broadly the impact to ’27 and ’28 of all the industrial partnerships and trucking, passenger auto, data center, etc.? Is this sort of a hockey stick moment in ’27 and then especially in ’28 as all the work that you’ve been doing for the last several years builds up?

Thank you.

Soroush Salehian (Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer)

Hey George, this is Soroush, happy to answer that. Look, obviously we are firing on multiple cylinders, right? We have, as we discussed on the call and you alluded to it, momentum, contracts, and that now translating into growth of our product shipments and then revenues directly from multiple segments. So we’re feeling good about not just where we are in this period, but really good about what’s ahead. Obviously we don’t provide guidance for future years, but we have set the framework at our investor meeting earlier in the year and we are feeling good about that rate of growth in the 70% to 100%. But I think beyond that, if you look at other opportunities across defense but also very importantly on the optical connectivity market, it’s really not baked into that. Right. So I think one of those converting and scaling, especially in the back half of the year, will result in that hockey stick curve that you’re talking about.

And that’s why we are investing in this and we’re seeing that feedback now directly from the customers. Again, that is going to have a game-changing effect for the company that will directly show up in our growth in a very strong way. That is not baked into plans today.

George Yannarikis (Analyst)

Thank you. And maybe just to focus in on passenger auto for a minute. I mean there seems to be maybe additional momentum in Western OEMs exploring accelerating their pathway to additional advanced autonomous solutions. Are you seeing any increased conversation volume from some other passenger auto OEMs outside of the one you already have in terms of deploying your solution? Thank you.

Soroush Salehian (Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think overall, yes, we are seeing—where we are is we’re feeling really good about on the automotive side, as I mentioned, the first top 10 passenger European OEM. On the trucking side, now also in our collaboration with Nvidia, remember that we are the core sensor of choice outside of China for the Hyperion platform. So Nvidia obviously is securing a number of OEMs and as OEMs across the globe are deploying with Hyperion between ’28 to ’29, we expect that multiple OEMs are also going to be adopting that.

And that, I think, is going to be also a sales channel for us and help us to expand into a number of other OEMs. So that’s why I think the progress that we’re making there is very encouraging, and I think focus for us is deliver on the first engagement, first production program with the top 10 OEM. I think from there we’re going to expand pretty quickly to multiple OEM programs. So that’s also why of course we’re hiring in that area as we expand there.

Separately from that, you asked about OEMs in North America and the U.S. I would say generally yes, we are seeing some revival of interest for RFI/RFQ programs also coming, and some of those already touch the Nvidia platform and a few don’t. But we are involved in both camps of that. And so that’s why we feel good about our progress in auto, which also allows us—if you recall, our strategy has always been work with the leaders in their respective fields that have the volume, the capability and scale to get us to market and build on that and land and expand.

So we’ve done that in automotive now. We’re executing on that and we’re now also able to do that in other markets including optical connectivity as well.

George Yannarikis (Analyst)

Thank you.

Bo (Conference Facilitator)

Thank you. We’ll go next now to Richard Shannon with Craig-Hallum. Hi Mr. Shannon, your line is open. You might be on mute, sir.

Richard Shannon (Analyst)

You’re right, I was on mute. Apologies for that. Soroush, thanks for letting me ask a couple questions here. The first one I ask is on your press release today about expansion of your optical connectivity portfolio—maybe actually a two-parter, and apologies if I stumble through this here—but the first part of it is looking at your ultra-high-power chipset here. How is this different than what you’ve announced earlier in the year? You had that paper in January that talked about an SOA, and then I think the solution you’re originally talking about was a laser combined with an SOA.

And this one doesn’t describe an SOA in it. So is this just a branding mechanism for that or is this entirely new chips and, if so, how are they different? And then the second part of the question is on the MESA product where it says more than 600 milliwatts per channel. I guess I thought that kind of power was actually going to melt or degrade the fiber. So if you could address that as well. Then I have one follow-up. Thank you.

Soroush Salehian (Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer)

Sure, Richard. Yeah. So first of all, I do want to mention one thing. One of the core capabilities of Aeva, why we are entering this market, why we see the significant interest and the actual traction now resulting in contracts and growth is that we have a unique capability that fits this market gap with high‑power sources. So obviously we’re working on—we had to go develop this for about 10 years because nobody had it. So we’re not coming up all of a sudden with a random thing that says we have a bunch of power that we can output.

We had to develop this. We have significant IP, we have all the field data, the reliability, and the many, many thousands of hours of testing and actual field evaluation, which is very rare in the market as obviously you know very well from the space. So I think I just want to highlight that. And naturally, obviously, we’ve been developing higher and higher power sources because that’s a requirement for the next generation of architectures going from 800 to 1.6, 3.2 and beyond that.

And then specifically for the UHB, this is a new chip. This is not just a rebranding of the same thing we announced. This is actually a laser device. And we are saying that we can achieve what we see as industry‑best performance—over 350 milliwatts at 50 C—with very low noise and low RIN and the performance that’s needed for the data center market. And we actually are saying greater than that. So we also have runway with our products to go beyond that.

And I think that also is looking ahead in the architectures as folks are needing it. That’s one of the other important things with customers is like you’re not just delivering something that kind of like gets close or barely meets it, but you can do it reliably, you can do it with yields, and you have the data and life science operating test and HTAW, all that to prove it. That’s why. And then you have the capability then to continue growing on that roadmap—on that pathway of keeping reading performance.

So that’s the kind of folks that customers want to work with. So that’s why we’re seeing that. So it is a distinct new offering, and we’re excited to provide that now to the market. And then I think you were touching on the MESA platform with the multichannel. Obviously, that’s something that is important as we go for the next generation of architectures in this market, especially for the ELSFB. And what we see on the ability to actually generate high powers in the 600 milliwatts becoming a requirement for next‑generation Arctic ship as folks go to 1.62. But the key there is ability to actually integrate this as a pluggable‑ready module inside LSFP.

So that’s effectively what we’re offering here is now, besides just a chip, you have a multichannel module that you can do a 4, 8, whatever it is inside LSFP—module ready to go—that can generate high powers for those architectures for higher‑speed transmission. Yeah, sure. So with the JDA partner, I think it’s important to mention that within a course of a few months we obviously launched the business, signed the first customer, and now in this quarter we actually generate our first sales and revenues for the optical connectivity business. So I think that is a milestone for us because it’s also important that this is transacting in a real way and it’s actually showing up for us. Obviously, we need to then work on the qualification and then from there the ramp‑up.

So that’s important. So with this JDA customer we delivered the first chipsets already to them. They are working on the integration, integrating their own integrated module and doing the tape‑outs for that. That’s going to happen in the next few months, shortly here in the beginning of the year, and from there the milestone is together we’re going to be going through the qualification. So we have done our own validation, our customer will do their integration and they do their own validation, then we enter the actual call with the hyperscaler.

And as you mentioned, our target is still the same—by middle of next year to get into that call, and then by late next year we’ll be complete, and from there we’ll switch over to start‑up production late ’27 and maybe early ’28, go straight to ramp‑up. So that’s where it’s a very fast‑paced timeline, which is why we had to also go secure our supply base doing these LTA agreements to get us what we need for the end customer. So that’s on that. And the last period, this period, also we already started engaging with our customer to come up with a platform for other hyperscalers. So there’s another hyperscaler also that they’re working with, and we’re starting engagements with that so that we can also apply our solutions together for another hyperscaler, which I think is a good sign of both the performance and ability to deliver to this first customer, but also our customer’s traction within hyperscalers.

So that’s what I would say about this JDA. And of course, we already talked separately about a second customer that we’re working with that’s on the optical side on the contract negotiation side.

Richard Shannon (Analyst)

Okay, great. Thanks for all that detail. My follow‑on question, I think you provided a couple of tidbits to it, but I want to ask it more holistically here. So your announcement coincident with last quarter’s call was a JDA with a direct customer who’s going to supply a product to a hyperscaler. You just mentioned today about hoping to be qualified with a hyperscaler by the middle of next year. So maybe you can talk about the milestones you have to go through first with your direct partner and then eventually with the hyperscaler.

And to what degree does that overlap some of the reliability testing you’ve done just supporting the automotive lidar market versus getting new types of testing required there? Thank you.

Bo (Conference Facilitator)

Thank you. And ladies and gentlemen, that is all the time we have for questions this afternoon. So that will bring us to the end of today’s Aeva Technologies third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. We’d like to thank you all so much for joining us this afternoon and wish you all a great remainder of your day. Goodbye.

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