In May, SAIC Mobility, backed by SAIC Motor, refiled its prospectus with Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing, launching its second attempt at an IPO. Compared with its first filing in October 2025, the main update was the addition of complete financial and operating data for 2025.
Through the prospectus, SAIC Mobility is trying to send a clear message to the market: its profitability is improving.
SAIC Mobility’s revenue has steadily expanded, while its losses have narrowed. From 2023 to 2025, the company’s revenue rose from RMB 5.718 billion (USD 840.6 million) to RMB 6.774 billion (USD 995.9 million). Its net loss narrowed from RMB 604 million (USD 88.8 million) to RMB 246 million (USD 36.2 million), while its overall gross margin rose from 6.6% to 11%.
The improvement was mainly attributable to economies of scale across its business. From 2024 to 2025, the company’s gross transaction value (GTV) and order volume both maintained year-on-year growth of about 10%.
However, SAIC Mobility’s operating data show a gap across different metrics. In recent years, although its financial data have continued to improve, the number of active drivers has barely grown. Monthly active drivers stood at 94,000 in 2023 and 100,000 in 2025. Compared with 2024, the figure fell 9% year-on-year in 2025.
The driver base has barely expanded, while order volume has maintained about 10% growth. This means SAIC Mobility’s revenue growth has not been driven mainly by more drivers, but by higher order revenue per driver. Breaking this down further, SAIC Mobility’s average driver revenue per order remained at RMB 21.9 (USD 3.2) in both 2024 and 2025, meaning its performance growth mainly came from an increase in the number of orders per vehicle.
The traffic trap
China’s ride-hailing market is close to saturation. Since the beginning of 2026, more than 20 higher-tier cities across the country have issued ride-hailing capacity saturation warnings, pushing the local mobility industry deeper into competition for existing demand. Against this backdrop, SAIC Mobility recorded 8.6 average daily orders per vehicle in 2025 and still achieved 14.6% year-on-year growth.
SAIC Mobility’s growth engine depends heavily on external aggregator platforms.
Data show that 98.5% of SAIC Mobility’s orders and GTV came from external channels such as Amap, Didi, Baidu, and Meituan. In 2025, SAIC Mobility paid RMB 556 million (USD 81.7 million) in commissions to aggregator platforms, an increase of RMB 114 million (USD 16.8 million) from the previous year.
That spending generated RMB 661 million (USD 97.2 million) in incremental GTV, implying an input-output ratio of roughly 1:6. But it also compressed profit margins.
There are two layers to the issue. First, customer acquisition costs remain high. In 2025, overall customer acquisition costs as a percentage of GTV rose again to 10%. Second, the platform’s profit margin is thin. Of the incremental GTV, 85% was paid out to drivers as revenue share and various subsidies. After other operating expenses are added, the platform is left with low-margin revenue.
Under the price-comparison mechanism of aggregator platforms, price has become the main competitive factor. Although SAIC Mobility is backed by SAIC Motor and has an automaker background, it remains relatively passive in direct competition with giants such as Didi.
Robotaxis remain a costly second curve
Ride-hailing companies are frequent issuers in the capital market, and many present robotaxis as a second growth curve to attract investor attention. But for local mobility companies, the sustained capital investment required for robotaxis is difficult to support independently.
In 2025, SAIC Mobility’s total R&D expenses were RMB 95.4 million (USD 14 million). That is insufficient to support the independent development and continuous iteration of robotaxi-related technologies. As a result, ride-hailing companies generally rely on external partnerships, such as Caocao Mobility with Afari and GAC Group with Didi.
SAIC Mobility has naturally chosen Momenta, which has close ties to SAIC Motor.
However, robotaxis could put the value of ride-hailing platforms under pressure. In the past, the core barrier for platforms lay in their ability to dispatch and manage large numbers of drivers. Autonomous vehicles could reduce reliance on human drivers, diminishing the value of traditional mobility companies’ accumulated operating capabilities.
As robotaxis move from deployment toward maturity, the role of ride-hailing platforms may gradually shift toward traffic aggregation. One example is Uber’s autonomous driving aggregation model overseas. Uber has formed partnerships with more than a dozen suppliers, including Zoox, Avride, and WeRide.
This is also the positioning signal SAIC Mobility wants to send investors in this prospectus. The company plans to carry out clearly divided, in-depth cooperation with SAIC Motor, Momenta, and others. SAIC Mobility’s platform will focus on R&D and iteration in areas such as intelligent dispatch and safety monitoring, while partners will lead autonomous driving technology R&D and mass-production vehicle development.
But this returns to a fundamental question: where will robotaxi traffic come from?
From the perspective of commercialization, the large-scale rollout of robotaxis will also have to confront their impact on employment. That means policy and livelihood-related uncertainties must be taken into account. Capital markets currently recognize the overseas expansion narrative, but compared with other ride-hailing platforms, SAIC Mobility has been more cautious in its overseas expansion. That may put pressure on its valuation.
Strategic investors bring limited certainty
In addition to Momenta, SAIC Mobility has brought in a high-profile group of shareholders.
Momenta focuses on autonomous driving solutions and the commercialization of autonomous driving technology. Amap, with its map navigation and big data capabilities in China, provides route planning and real-time traffic information, while also channeling potential customers through its large user base. Contemporary Amperex Technology, or CATL, is a global battery supplier that can provide battery products and energy solutions for SAIC Mobility’s vehicles, supporting vehicle range and safety.
From a practical perspective, however, the likelihood of these synergies materializing remains open to question.
First, the core of competition in the ride-hailing market is price and service value. If SAIC Mobility fully adopts CATL batteries and SAIC vehicles, its vehicle costs could be higher than the market average. That would run counter to the cost efficiency ride-hailing companies typically pursue.
Second, even if Amap can provide SAIC Mobility with traffic support, that traffic has limited value if most of the resulting profit is absorbed by traffic costs.
KrASIA features translated and adapted content that was originally published by 36Kr. This article was written by Huang Yida for 36Kr.
Note: RMB figures are converted to USD at rates of RMB 6.80 = USD 1 based on estimates as of July 8, 2026, unless otherwise stated. USD conversions are presented for ease of reference and may not fully match prevailing exchange rates.