The Chinese company Hesai, one of the largest producers of lidar systems in the world, is deepening its collaboration with Nvidia, the dominant company in the artificial intelligence processor market but increasingly active in the autonomous driving sector.
In simple terms, lidars – short for light detection and ranging – are object detection systems on the road: they work by emitting laser pulses and measuring the time it takes for them to “bounce” off an object and return. The sensors then combine thousands of these measurements to create a three-dimensional map – known as a point cloud – that allows autonomous vehicles to navigate their surroundings.
Hesai’s lidars are one of the options available on Nvidia’s autonomous driving platform, a sort of “ecosystem” composed of both hardware and software, customizable in its various components depending on the needs of automakers.
However, this collaboration could soon come under the scrutiny of U.S. authorities, considering that as early as 2024 the Department of Defense had placed Hesai on a “blacklist” of entities considered close to China’s armed forces and therefore risky for American national security.
NOTHING ILLEGAL, BUT…
Being on the blacklist prevents Hesai from entering into supply contracts with the Pentagon, but does not make the sale of its products to U.S. companies illegal, provided they are not used for non-military purposes.
The collaboration with Nvidia is therefore legitimate, as are relations with other American autonomous driving companies such as Amazon’s Zoox (robotaxi), Kodiak (trucks), Agtonomy (agricultural machinery), and Nuro. Hesai’s sensors are even present at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, where they monitor passenger flow at security checkpoints and boarding gates.
ARE CHINESE LIDARS A RISK?
Beyond the legitimacy of these relationships, according to several security experts interviewed by Cnbc, the United States would do well to distance itself from Chinese sensor technologies rather than allow their integration into autonomous driving systems: the Beijing government could indeed exploit them to obtain data on critical American infrastructure and to conduct cyberattacks.
Once autonomous vehicles become widespread on American roads, it is easy to expect that Chinese lidars will collect a lot of data – and very precise data at that – on the location of energy plants, airports, or military installations.
Lidars can be “infected” through malware (malicious software, simply put) inserted originally during the manufacturing cycle, or later through firmware updates. Cnbc wrote that such malware can be difficult to identify since automakers usually do not have access to the source code and the malware can remain “dormant” until activated.
A lidar compromised by malware could alter the vehicle’s point cloud, making a non-existent obstacle appear or, conversely, removing a real obstacle from the system’s “view.” If the same model of “infected” lidar were installed on a large number of autonomous cars, such a cyberattack could cause accidents and widespread disruptions.
HOW MUCH INFLUENCE DOES CHINA HAVE OVER HESAI?
Hesai is listed both on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and on the Nasdaq, the electronic stock market in New York, and is one of the largest companies in the world in its sector, controlling a third of the lidar market for the automotive industry. This is due to the very competitive prices of its products, made possible also by subsidies provided by the Chinese government: Hesai itself, in a document submitted to the SEC (the American federal agency overseeing the stock market) in 2025, admitted to having received aid from Beijing in the form of reduced tax rates, subsidized interest rates, and the ability to deduct 200 percent of research and development expenses.
Hesai states that neither the Chinese government nor any Chinese government entity owns shares in the company. However, in communications to the SEC, it declared that the Beijing executive “exercises significant control over the regulation of our activities and may influence or intervene in them at any time.” The company specifies that its sensors do not store any data – and therefore could not transfer it to Beijing – because they lack the necessary memory capacity.
THE PENTAGON’S POSITION
The Pentagon believes that Hesai participates in China’s civil-military fusion program. The company, for example, is headquartered in Shanghai’s Jiading district, an area already associated with other initiatives of this kind. One of its major electronic component suppliers is the state conglomerate CETC, linked to the Chinese military.
The Prague Security Studies Institute, in a white paper published a year ago, discovered the presence of Hesai’s lidars on a Chinese military vehicle in 2023.
