• First quarter total revenue came in at $34.3 million, while adjusted earnings per share were a loss of $0.09, both ahead of estimates.
• For 2026, the company expects its robotaxi fleet to grow to 3,500 vehicles deployed across more than 20 cities worldwide.
• The company stated that Level 4 driverless systems must achieve safety performance substantially beyond that of human drivers.

Shares of Pony AI Inc. (PONY) rose on Tuesday after the autonomous vehicle technology provider reported a strong first quarter and raised its robotaxi fleet and revenue forecasts, benefiting from increasing user demand as it scales its business while significantly focusing on safety.

At the time of writing, PONY stock was up more than 9% in premarket trading and on track for its best single-day percentage gains in nearly two months.

Explosive Robotaxi Growth With Safety In Mind

During the quarter, Pony AI continued to expand its operational footprint in China, deployed robotaxi services in Croatia, marking its entry in the European market, and initiated driverless deployments in Dubai.

“Safety is the foundation of everything we build at Pony.ai, and it is embedded across our autonomous driving stack, vehicle design, and daily operations,” said Dr. Tiancheng Lou, Chief Technology Officer. “As our fully driverless Robotaxi fleet continues to scale, the multi-layered safety framework will remain critical to our technology leadership and long-term commercialization.”

While commenting on its business scaling strategy through larger fleets, the company stressed that Level 4 driverless systems must achieve safety performance substantially beyond that of human drivers and not rely solely on imitating human driving behavior or on accumulating Level 2 assisted-driving data.

“As the virtual driver becomes increasingly advanced, human evaluation alone is no longer sufficient. Further model improvement increasingly requires AI-powered evaluation and self-iteration,” the company said in a statement.

PONY Q1 Results At A Glance

In the first quarter, Pony AI said robotaxi revenue increased nearly fivefold to $8.6 million, with fare-charging revenue rising more than fivefold.

The company’s total revenue more than doubled to $34.3 million, ahead of the $22 million consensus, while adjusted earnings per share (EPS) were a loss of $0.09, better than the $0.13 loss-per-share consensus, according to Fiscal AI estimates.

For 2026, the company expects its robotaxi fleet to grow to 3,500 vehicles deployed in over 20 cities worldwide, up from the previously estimated 3,000, and robotaxi revenues to increase 3.5x from last year, up from 3x.

What Retail Thinks About PONY

On Stocktwits, retail sentiment about the PONY stock turned ‘extremely bullish’ from ‘bullish’ over the last 24 hours.

PONY stock has lost more than a third of its value so far this year, and more than half over the last 12 months, underperforming the benchmark S&P index.

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