Gasgoo Munich- On Feb. 4, Hesai Technology ("Hesai"), a leading Chinese leader in LiDAR sensors, announced it has entered into a strategic partnership with Southeast Asian technology heavyweight Grab, under which Grab will serve as Hesai's exclusive distributor across Southeast Asia.
Image source: Hesai
The arrangement gives Grab responsibility for sales, customer support and market development of Hesai's LiDAR products throughout the region, significantly strengthening Hesai's local commercial presence.
By tapping into Grab's extensive resources and established distribution channels, Hesai aims to make high-performance, high-reliability LiDAR sensors more readily available to customers across Southeast Asia. The partnership is designed to lower barriers to adoption for a wide range of applications, from robotics to autonomous driving systems. For Grab, the exclusive distributorship secures a dependable supply of core sensing hardware to support its own initiatives in autonomous mobility and high-definition mapping.
Beyond near-term commercial goals, the two companies say the collaboration will help accelerate the development of physical AI and embodied intelligence in Southeast Asia. By improving access to LiDAR as a foundational hardware technology, Hesai and Grab aim to enable intelligent machines to move beyond purely digital capabilities and operate safely and reliably in the region's dense and complex urban environments.
Grab is widely regarded as Southeast Asia's leading super-app platform, with operations spanning delivery, mobility and digital financial services. Its services currently reach more than 800 cities across eight countries—Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam—serving millions of users through a single app that integrates food delivery, grocery shopping, parcel services, ride-hailing, digital payments, as well as lending and insurance offerings.
To keep pace with rising global demand for LiDAR, Hesai has outlined plans to double its annual production capacity from 2 million units in 2025 to 4 million units in 2026. Construction of its new manufacturing facility in Bangkok, known as the "Galileo" plant, is progressing steadily and is expected to begin operations in early 2027. Once online, the site will further strengthen Hesai's global production network and provide additional headroom for long-term growth.
Looking ahead, Hesai and Grab said they plan to deepen their cooperation in market expansion and channel development, working together to accelerate the large-scale deployment of advanced LiDAR technologies across Southeast Asia.
