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Earnings Call: Q3 2022

Nov 9, 2022

Rob Moffatt
VP of Corporate Development and IR, Innoviz

Good morning. This is Rob Moffatt, Vice President of Corporate Development and IR at Innoviz, and I want to welcome you to our third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Joining us today are Omer Keilaf, Chief Executive Officer, and Eldar Cegla, Chief Financial Officer. Following their opening remarks, we will open the call for your questions. I would like to remind everyone that this call is being recorded and will be available on the investor relations section of our website at ir.innoviz.tech. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that our discussion today will include forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties relating to future events and the future financial performance of Innoviz. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements.

Forward-looking statements made today speak only to our expectations as of today, and we undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise them. For discussion of some important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from any forward-looking statements, please see the Risk Factors section of our Form 20-F filed with the SEC on March 30, 2022. I will now turn the call over to Omer. Please go ahead.

Omer Keilaf
CEO, Innoviz

Thank you, Rob, and welcome to the team. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I'm excited to provide another update on the meaningful progress we've been making at Innoviz. This has been another fast-moving quarter with new design wins, new technology partnerships, significant upgrades to our manufacturing throughput, and a big step forward in our move into the non-automotive market. Let's start things off with a look at our most recent new customer win. After our Volkswagen announcement last quarter, we said that we had two to three additional OEMs that could make a decision in the next six months. Proven true to our word, we announced in September that we had secured yet another production award with a new Asia-based customer.

Not only is this our fourth production win and our second win as a Tier 1, it also signals an exciting acceleration in our momentum, delivering back-to-back production wins just one quarter out. We will dig a little deeper into our pipeline later in the call, but let's first take a look at this most recent deal. The new contract is with an Asian OEM who we cannot name yet, but is on a fast path to becoming an emerging global EV leader. There are some very important parts of the deal that I want to touch on. First and foremost, this is an extremely tech-forward OEM. They took a close look at our technology and the platform partners that we can integrate with, and they decisively chose our solution over any other competition.

In that process, they also concluded that we are well-positioned as a Tier 1 direct supplier. Additionally, they are currently targeting a fast ramp-up of LiDAR installation on two models with a quick turnaround to SOP with production revenues expected already to begin in 2024. This deal articulates our long-term strategy extremely well. Very large deals like the Volkswagen deal we announced last quarter are going to bring the volumes that will rapidly drive our unit cost economics lower. Lower volume deals will bring our higher contribution margins. With each new deal we win, we are growing our pre-production NRE revenues and securing increased funding of production machinery and tooling. Over time, each deal will move us closer and closer to our long-term margin targets. From a global standpoint, this is our first automotive win in Asia.

Expanding Innoviz geographic reach and production footprint, this is an important step in our platform expansion efforts and highlights the incredible progress we've been making on this front. Combined with recent progress on the non-automotive side, Asia is evolving into an increasingly important geography for Innoviz, and we hope to have additional news to share in the coming quarters as this market is rapidly developing for us. Last but not least, there is one more very important part of this deal, and it has to do with the technology partner that we are working with for this customer. As many of you know, there are three leading autonomous driving platforms in the auto industry that operate the hardware and the software stack that integrates the sensing and perception inputs from the various ADAS components such as LiDAR and radars and cameras.

With this deal announcement, we're excited to share that now we have production awards, not demos or partnerships, but actual production awards with two out of three main platforms in the industry. Integrating with these platforms can be an important barrier to entry. We believe that once you are on the platform and you have the working relationship with the partner, you can gain deep domain experience together, and it could accelerate future business wins for both parties. I want to encourage investors to not underestimate this aspect of the deal. Several of the RFQs that we are currently competing on have already decided to use this platform partner. We believe that having this working relationship can increase our odds of winning additional business in the near term. Needless to say, we are very excited about this development.

Now, let's spend a little time on why we are winning in the automotive market. I picked up from some of my conversations with investors that there is a belief that the success in the LiDAR industry is going to come down to one thing, like range or resolution, but that is obviously not enough. In our experience with customers, you cannot simply win by checking one or two boxes. You have to check all of them. You have to be strong on each of these categories, price, performance, automotive-grade, manufacturing, and company maturity. The feedback that we've gotten from customer is that we aren't winning these deals by one or two points. We are winning across the board on multiple fronts. Don't just take it from us.

We wanted to share a quick video from the event we hosted in September, celebrating the opening of our new headquarters with a large group of investors and customers from all over the world. It's not only a big building that who knows what we'll do with it's actually going to allow us to meet our targets.

Speaker 10

Of all the places that I've been to, I was so impressed by the vigor and the creativity and the technology in play. Never before the automotive industry had been under such a strong change movement. We're looking at the sensors, picking out the best sensors that we can find in the markets. In the future, we will work closely together with you. You deserve all the merits of the efforts that you are accomplished so far. This is the fruit of all your effort, and I think this deserves a big applause from everyone here. Thank you.

Many companies had, you know, one or two smart engineering idea how to solve a specific problem, but Innoviz looks like the most promising one in making the best out of those conflicting things, and that's why we decided a few years back for Innoviz.

Today, you know, I think there's probably a dozen, maybe a little bit more than that, of companies that are worth talking about. You know, 8 of them, I believe, are now public independently, including Innoviz. A lot of you know. So you also have to talk to the customers. You have to talk to the Tier 1s, to the OEMs. That's what we did. That's how we evaluated. This is overwhelmingly positive feedback for Innoviz's products. This is sort of how we think about the industry and why we think Innoviz is a leader.

Omer Keilaf
CEO, Innoviz

To me, it's very clear that, you know, 2 years from today, 3 years from toda y, we'll continue to make progress and develop the right technology to allow the use of safe mobility everywhere. Nothing is better than hearing it from our customers and partners themselves. One of the other points that I want to make about our strategy is that we are deeply focused on Level 2+ to Level 3, sweet spot of the automotive industry. There has been an increase in headlines recently highlighting that the progress with Level 5 full autonomous driving is moving slower than hoped. It is increasingly looking more like 2035 or even later. We wanted to take the opportunity to remind investors that it has been long our view that full Level 5 autonomy was going to take many years.

This is why from day one, we built the company strategy around focusing on the level two plus, level three to level four categories in the autonomy spectrum. The recent developments of OEMs either de-emphasizing or even fully canceling their level five effort is happening at the same time that they are realizing that many customers have grown frustrated with level one and level two active safety solutions, like forward collision warning and lane keeping assist, with some drivers turning the features off entirely. Looking at both of these trends together, OEMs are quickly realizing that level two plus and level three autonomy systems are likely going to be the biggest differentiating factor in the automotive industry over the next decade. You can see this in our pipeline in our next slide.

One of the major milestones that we track for our business is our OEM share. Since we believe that once you are on the shelf and validated with an OEM and integrated into their software stack, it becomes easier for them to pull you into more and more product lines. Once you are embedded, you should be able to grow with the OEM as LiDAR-based L2+ and L3 systems are rapidly democratized and moved up the S-curve over the next decade. On that basis, our OEM share, as it stands today, is roughly 15% of the global automotive market. If you look at our pipeline to the right, we have 11 OEMs that are in either RFI or RFQ process. Collectively, these 11 OEMs produce approximately 40 million vehicles per year, representing an additional 42% of the global market.

When combined with 15% share currently in Innoviz order book, it means that the company either has business or is actively competing for new business with OEMs that hold roughly 57% of the global automotive market. This pipeline includes many of the world's largest OEMs and is full of names that you are familiar with. In fact, six of the OEMs have annual production levels of 4 million units or more, and the average production within the pipeline is about 4.2 million per year. What's even more important here is that we believe that nearly all of the pipeline decisions will be made by the end of 2024, with most of these decisions likely to close in 2023. When I meet with investor, I'm often asked, "Why should I care now?

Let's talk again when production starts." What the question is missing is that there is a sizable land grab taking place right now, and the bulk of the early market share is going to be awarded in the next six to 12 months. Ultimately, we think this is going to be a winner-takes-most market with us in the lead, and this market share will be very sticky for the next decade or more. Now, let's transition from the long term to the past quarter. We had some very exciting developments in the third quarter that I want to spend some time on. First, I'm excited to share that during the quarter, we began shipping these samples, units originating from the Holly, Michigan, production line.

As a reminder, the V-sample is the version that ultimately is going to go to full production and needs to be produced by the final production tools and processes. Its design is already automotive-grade, and this is the last stage of the process is used by the OEM for the final manufacturing validation before moving to serial production. You can see in the photos how excited we are to be this close to the start of the production of our customers. One of the other exciting development this quarter relates to the upgrades we've made to the production processes, which were required as part of reaching the D-sample milestone. The production process upgrades were made in parallel with our planned downtime from our headquarters move, which included the movement of the calibration and testing lines within our building. I don't want to understate the scope of this effort.

I personally spent many, many late nights with our engineers implementing and re-engineering the process so we could maximize the yields and minimize the downtimes of our lines. This was a crucial step in our plans for the next stage of our strategy as it removed a key bottleneck in our production. These developments achieved two important things. Number one, it helps prepare us for mass production with BMW and the shuttle programs launching next year. Number two, it will unlock more units for sale in the non-automotive market beginning this quarter and ramping into 2023. In the past, the majority of our production needed to be prioritized for larger volume automotive customers, but now with this upgrade, we will be increasingly able to pursue both markets simultaneously and in more equal measure.

While we haven't been as vocal about our progress in the non-automotive market as we have been in automotive, it has the potential to become an important part of our business, and we have made some early success, including the deals and partnerships from the third quarter listed on this slide. One important takeaway here for investors is that every time a customer chooses to work with our lighter solution, it's a validation of both our hardware and software. Of course, not every deal is at the size of Volkswagen and BMW, but each announcement we make here is a situation where a customer takes a long, close look at our technology, compares it to competitive environment, and chooses to go with Innoviz. This validation and early momentum in non-automotive markets, coupled with our increased ability to ship units, is an important development.

When you combine all of the various TAMs from the non-automotive market, it can approximate the TAM on the automotive side. The product design cycles are shorter, so the revenue can come on faster, and they tend to be at higher gross margins. It's a perfect complement to the automotive market, where volumes can be in the millions of units, allowing you to reach market-leading unit cost economics once those volumes come on. If you take a step back, these are both $30 billion TAMs that we are showing great progress in. To accelerate our success in the non-automotive market, we are planning to increasingly work with distributors, distribution partners. In fact, next week we are launching our first ever three-day long global distributors summit here at headquarters in Israel.

We'll be hosting nine industrial and technology distributors from across Asia, Europe, and North America to educate them on our technology, arm them with our marketing tools, and introduce them to our ordering and logistics platforms. Engaging distributors is an important evolution in our go-to-market strategy. It's a lower-cost way to amplify the efforts of our sales, expanding our reach in non-automotive quickly and without meaningful increases to our headcount and fixed costs. As we've said before, 2023 will be an important year for our growth in the non-automotive market, and we're making progress in building the partnerships and the overall foundation for success in the coming years. With that, I'll turn it over to Eldar to go over the financials.

Eldar Cegla
CFO, Innoviz

Thank you, Omer, and good morning, everyone. Starting with cash, we continue to maintain a high liquidity level with approximately $218 million in cash, short-term deposits, restricted cash, and marketable security on balance sheet as of quarter end. As we have said in the past, our cost structure has already largely matured, so our operating cash outlays remained mostly stable during the quarter and were in line with our 2022 budget. Moving to income statement, revenues in the quarter came in at $0.9 million compared to Q3 2021 revenues of $2.1 million.

Sales in the quarters were impacted by the upgrades we made to our calibration and test lines during the move of our company headquarters, as Omer previously discussed. While the timing for the upgrade took slightly longer than expected, the investment was well worth it, giving the meaningful improvement in throughput. With these changes behind us, we expect our revenues cadence to normalize going forward with an uplift to InnovizOne unit deliveries in the coming quarters. In fact, our current unit delivery in Q4 2022 have already surpassed Q3 2022 deliveries. On the cost side, operating expenses for the third quarter of 2022 were $31.3 million, an increase from $30 million in the third quarter of 2021. This included $4.9 million of share-based compensation compared to $8.2 million in Q3 2021.

The year-over-year increase in operating expenses was primarily due to an increase in headcount during the quarter, partially offset by the lower level of share-based compensation. Research and development expenses for Q3 2022 were $24.2 million, an increase from $20.6 million in Q3 2021. The quarter included $3.2 million attributable to share-based compensation compared to $3.7 million in Q3 2021. In conclusion, while the setback in our unit delivery this quarter was slightly larger than expected, the volume should be recovered in the following quarters, and the long-term benefits that we expect it to unlock are meaningful and a step in the right direction for the company as we move to full series production of the BMW and shuttle programs next year.

This progress further strengthens our position in the marketplace and improves our ability to gain additional market share going forward in both the automotive and non-automotive segments. With that, I will turn the call back to Omer.

Omer Keilaf
CEO, Innoviz

Thank you, Eldar. Before turning it over to the Q&A, I wanted to wrap up our prepared remarks with a quick review of where we stand today versus our original 2022 goals. On the right-hand side of this slide, you can see the goals that we have set ourselves at the beginning of the year and where we stand now. In terms of pre-production programs, we came into the year targeting 10, and today we are at 14. We targeted one design win, and we are already delivered two with two more months left in the year. In terms of the order book, we originally targeted 30% increase, and thanks in particular to the Volkswagen deal and now our most recent win, we've blown through that goal with a 165% gain, moving to $6.9 billion.

Again, the year is not over yet. In terms of our pipeline, we previously disclosed 12 programs in RFI or RFQ process, with 2-3 expected to make a decision in the next six months. With the announcement of our new Asian OEM deal, the 12 goes to 11, and now we have 1-3 customers who could make a decision in the upcoming six months. When I talk about the momentum that we have at Innoviz, you can see it on this slide. We've already delivered on the things we promised to deliver for 2022, and we believe there is a lot more to come in 2023 and 2024. Okay, with that said, I will turn over the call to the operator to take us into the Q&A.

Operator

Thank you. In order to ask a question, please raise your hand using your mobile or desktop application and wait for your name to be announced. Once again, in order to ask a question, please raise your hand using your mobile or desktop application to be announced. Please note that after the Q&A session, we should be handing the call back over to Omer for closing remarks. Our first call today comes from Mark Delaney from Goldman Sachs.

Mark Delaney
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Yes, thank you very much for taking the questions. The first one is, I'm wondering if you can give any preliminary input on how well Innoviz is doing with the 1-3 OEM decisions that could be made in the next six months. Can you elaborate a bit on how impactful being qualified with two of the key platforms has been with those decisions?

Omer Keilaf
CEO, Innoviz

Okay. I would say that with those opportunities, we are already at the short list, meaning that the last stage of the RFQ. Generally, I would say that we are in a very strong position. We've heard several times that our award with Volkswagen is very meaningful. One of them is using one of the platforms, the other one is using the other. The third actually, I'm not sure which platform they're using. I would definitely say that from the first two I mentioned, the fact that we're already integrated into those platforms is a key advantage.

Mark Delaney
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Yeah, that's helpful. My second question was hoping you can give more of an update on how the D-sample process is going and any more clarity you can provide on when you think the company will be in serial production. You said next year for a couple of programs, but is there more granularity you can share? Is it more first half or second half-weighted? Thanks.

Omer Keilaf
CEO, Innoviz

Sure. Maybe I'll explain a little bit about what we've done in the last quarter. Moving from C-sample and D-sample means that the product in C-sample, the product needs to finalize all of the design validation for automotive grade. The D-sample is related to the production validation. You need to start the D-sample when all the production processes are done. We had to, before starting the D-sample, we had to go through all of the needed changes from the open issues we had in our production processes in order to meet that milestone. We started shipping already the D-sample, and now we're doing D-sample production validation.

Basically, it means that next year, hopefully by the beginning of the year, we'll be already able to meet the start of production of our customers.

Mark Delaney
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Thank you.

Operator

Okay. Our next call comes from Jared Maymon from Berenberg. Please go ahead.

Jared Maymon
Analyst, Berenberg

Hey, good morning, guys. First of all, great to see my colleague Michael on the video referencing our channel checks. There's no doubt the feedback from those customers and prospective customers shows you guys are in a great position. First question for me, you guys talked about it on the presser and then on the call as well. On that new platform partner, given your existing partnership with Qualcomm, as you guys pointed out, that kinda leaves NVIDIA or Mobileye, either one of those, obviously great to kinda hitch yourselves to. I guess the question is, can you expand a bit on what the mechanics of that relationship are?

Given a key competitor has called out past partnerships with those platform partners, can you explain how your competitive positioning and the procurement process changes for you?

Omer Keilaf
CEO, Innoviz

Sure. The way it works with these platforms or maybe specifically with this one, the way that they work with the different customers is that, eventually it's the customer decision on which sensor they would like to source. Eventually there is a lot of value in once they are already using your sensor, collecting data, practicing their algorithms, it removes a lot of overhead on doing that again. Eventually, although it's the customer decision on which sensor they want to use, there is a certain, I would say, overhead they might need to pay if they want the platform to support the different sensors.

In general, I would say, the fact that we were awarded to a program with this new platform is giving us a huge benefit or maybe the customer, the future customer, a huge benefit because it leverages on existing effort going on and I mean, overall program cost would be lower. I hope it's clear.

Jared Maymon
Analyst, Berenberg

Yeah. No, no, definitely. Thanks, Omer. Second question. So great to hear the update on the forward-looking order book. Just on the order book in general, we've been trying to get a better sense of how the top LiDAR players are approaching those calculations alongside the customer. So can you help us better understand how estimates on things like take rates are arrived at? If any unconfirmed wins are considered in there, like what some of your peers are doing?

Omer Keilaf
CEO, Innoviz

No. We're only referring to design wins we have, and those are based on volumes that were provided as part of the RFQ. We give some weighted measure to the different scenarios that are given to us and based on the number of vehicles that are expected to be included across the several years of the program. We are assuming a moderate take rate, which is starting from 1%-14%. It's actually different between the different programs because for passenger vehicle, there is more clarity on the number of vehicles per customer. Specifically on the shuttle program, this is based on just the volumes that we got from the customer itself because there are no volumes out there already.

Jared Maymon
Analyst, Berenberg

Got it. That's it for me. Thanks, Omer.

Omer Keilaf
CEO, Innoviz

Sure.

Operator

Okay. Our next question comes from Andres Sheppard from Cantor Fitzgerald. Please go ahead.

Andres Sheppard
Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald

Hey, Omer. Hey, Eldar. Thanks for taking my question, and congrats on another quarter. A few quick questions from me. In regards to the revenue numbers, Eldar. That was a little bit lower than Q3 in 2021. Looks like the primary reason was it says here downtime from the company's headquarters move. I'm just wondering, can you expand a little bit on that? And I know you're not guiding Q4, but should we expect a stronger Q4 to finish the year? Thanks.

Omer Keilaf
CEO, Innoviz

So-

Eldar Cegla
CFO, Innoviz

Yeah. It was very important for us, this move, the setback is primarily due to the upgrade that we did and in relation to the D-sample stage that we transitioned to, which means currently the throughput is much better than we had before. As I said already now, the deliveries that we made to this point in Q4 is larger, exceeds the deliveries that we did last quarter. Definitely, I expect the momentum to pick up on that. Maybe, one important change from last quarter is the fact that we won another program, which has some NREs to it, some considerable NREs.

Omer Keilaf
CEO, Innoviz

Essentially.

Eldar Cegla
CFO, Innoviz

Yeah. Which will impact us already next year. This is something very important. We want a very nice program that will contribute to our revenues next year as well.

Omer Keilaf
CEO, Innoviz

I want to maybe add to this, if I may. You know, as a company pursuing automotive, our commitment to our customers, such as BMW, to follow their quality requirements, moving to the D sample required us to modify our production processes to meet with their requirements. It's not only the product that needs to be automotive-grade, also all of the production tools and processes need to meet certain requirements. We had those open issues to cover in order to move to the D sample. In a way, we had to sacrifice the short term in order to do those necessary changes so we can move to the D sample. The downtime was, I would say unavoidable.

In general, it is to support our customers that we're expecting to launch next year. Maybe to add to the recent design wins, as Eldar said, this recent design win, there are two very important elements here related to the revenues. One, as Eldar said, is the significant NREs, but also the production tools. The customer is funding also the production. Another element which is super critical is the fact that this program, out of the different RFQs that we were competing, was the one that will launch the earliest, and with quite substantial volume already in 2024.

For us, it was very strategic to win this program because it allows us to see growth of our revenues I would say in a good way already in 2024.

Andres Sheppard
Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald

Wonderful. Thank you both. That's very thorough. I appreciate it. Quick follow-up. Earlier this week, we saw some consolidation in the LiDAR sector with the merger between Ouster and Velodyne, which I'm sure you're aware of. I'm just wondering maybe, Omer, you know, in regards to strategy, is this something that you and Innoviz might be considering? You know, obviously you guys have great partnerships with BMW, CARIAD, the Asian OEM, so in some ways you are ahead of the competition. I'm just wondering, are you exploring or contemplating any, you know, M&A activities? Thank you.

Omer Keilaf
CEO, Innoviz

No, it's a good question. So I can share with you that in the last probably year, we came across with different ideas coming from banks, et cetera, to consider that kind of path. I have to say that in my point of view, the only thing that matters for us is whether this acquisition will help us to gain momentum in the automotive space, and whether the technology that we might need in order to have a better offering into the market will help us to do that. From that point of view, we didn't see and we don't see a good reason to look at that approach.

Andres Sheppard
Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald

Got it. Fair enough. Maybe one last one, if I could. Eldar, maybe for you. Can you just remind us on your capital needs, you know, how are you thinking about capital raising needs, you know, as we approach 2023 and beyond?

Eldar Cegla
CFO, Innoviz

Yes. Basically we are looking at next year in terms of what are the expected revenue or inflow sources. As we said before, we expect both the launch of the BMW program, which will both generate the final NRE that we are expecting there in revenues. We expect the shuttle programs to launch. We have additional revenues coming from the new client in Asia. We have some expected inflows. In addition to that, we have a strong cash position, so I think we are in a good position. Of course, there might be certain opportunities depending on what we do in the market, but currently this is our plan.

Omer Keilaf
CEO, Innoviz

Maybe I'll add to that as well, if I may. We are pursuing additional programs right now, and with every program that we are competing with, there is a substantial NRE requirement that will also support our efforts, which is quite meaningful. In that manner, it supports our needs. We are also. I would say the company organizational structure is very I would say efficient. The way the company is able to support different programs is based on the fact that the technology is highly flexible, and it actually meets all the requirements we've seen. As such, it doesn't require a large or, you know, meaningful need to grow the company to support additional customers.

Basically with every company that we need to support, the headcount does not require to increase meaningfully.

Andres Sheppard
Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald

Wonderful. Thank you very, very much again. Thanks for taking our questions. Congrats to another good quarter and I'll pass it on. Thanks, guys.

Omer Keilaf
CEO, Innoviz

Thank you.

Eldar Cegla
CFO, Innoviz

Thank you.

Operator

Our next call comes from Samik Chatterjee from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Samik Chatterjee
Analyst, JPMorgan

Hi. Thanks for taking my question, and hope you can hear me. I guess a couple from my side, and I'll ask them together. One- Firstly, in terms of your pipeline, can you talk about the sort of geographic diversity or sort of how the pipeline looks like in terms of, the split between the geos or the OEMs there? Are there any geographies where you feel you're sort of underrepresented today and even in terms of your pipeline and need to focus more, and invest more towards over the sort of next 12 months or so? The second one, the question I had was around this, new win that you have, where the customer is trying to rush to LiDAR, sort of series production in 2024 with the Asian OEM that you referenced.

I mean, as a company, as a LiDAR company that's then providing safety, how are you trying to mitigate some of the risks of the OEM trying to rush this to series production? What is allowing the customer to rush this or compress the timeline? Is it that the software, stack is much more developed, or they're more confident about the software stack? Like, how do you as a company then mitigate some of the challenges in trying to balance sort of safety versus compressing the timeline to production? Thank you.

Omer Keilaf
CEO, Innoviz

Great. First of all, thank you, Samik Chatterjee, for the questions. Starting with the first question. Geographically, we are spread now. I mean, we started in Germany, because we saw it as the base of the automotive market. I would say that even some of our, even our Asian new customer's R&D team, there is a big team there also in Germany, which is also helpful for us. Other than that, we are currently in discussion within those 11 OEMs. I would say that probably it's, you know, it's everywhere. Japan, U.S., and, you know, other areas of Europe. I don't think that we have a blind spot. You know, blind spot by definition is probably something I don't know about.

I don't think there is a car maker that is pursuing a LiDAR now when we're not engaged. I hope that answered your first question 'cause maybe just I'll add I think that there is good progress in Japan now, moving faster, and also in, you know, in the US maybe a little bit, following that. Other than that, the second question about safety. Look, the second program, I mean, the new program that I mentioned, the partner that is responsible for the overall driving decision and testing is a very credible player. I believe that eventually they are responsible for all of the driving testing and safety.

We are responsible for the LiDAR and the perception software. Eventually, I believe this is a, you know, this is with a very credible team behind it, so I'm not concerned.

Samik Chatterjee
Analyst, JPMorgan

Thank you. Thanks a lot.

Operator

Okay, I would like to pass over the next question to McClain Culver from Rosenblatt Securities. Please go ahead.

McClain Culver
Analyst, Rosenblatt Securities

Hi, this is McClain on for Kevin Cassidy. Thank you for letting me ask a question. I had a few questions around the Innoviz360 RFQs. Have you already started accumulating RFQs? Is the process different than the automotive market? I had a few follow-ups. Thanks.

Omer Keilaf
CEO, Innoviz

The short answer is no. The Innoviz 360 was designed based on discussion with a specific customer. Generally speaking, I would say that the Innoviz 360 would be delivered as samples to different customers. The 360, maybe there's one RFQ. I would say that generally speaking, the automotive market is not yet at the stage where Level 4 is making meaningful progress in terms of making decisions on the product, but we do see a trend going there. I believe that I mean, basically, we started to develop the 360 knowing that that stage would come, and I believe that next year that's the time that we'll start to see it more meaningfully.

Right now, the discussions are more on the, I would say the technical aspects to see that we design the system that meets all of their needs. No, I would say RFQs in the automotive market. There are discussions with non-automotive customers. I would say that one of the changes we've made to the product is related to discussions about the industrial design. Many customers that we've showed the product have made their comment about having a more seamless integration just by having a product that is more similar in terms of shape. Therefore, we did change the product, the way it looks and connects. We hope to show this product by the end of this year.

I think it will be a very disruptive technology because it introduces a very significant improvement to the price-performance that is offered today by others.

McClain Culver
Analyst, Rosenblatt Securities

Okay. Thank you. That's helpful. For those RFQs, about how many competitors do you have? Is it kinda the same, about 2-3 as before?

Omer Keilaf
CEO, Innoviz

I would say that different geographies sometimes introduce different competitors. In general, we mostly compete with the Tier 1s. There are the Tier 1s that you're probably familiar with that have their own LiDAR. I would say that in general, we don't really see a lot of the other LiDARs compete directly.

McClain Culver
Analyst, Rosenblatt Securities

Okay. Thank you again. That's all for me.

Omer Keilaf
CEO, Innoviz

You're welcome. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you very much. That shall conclude our Q&A session for today. I would like to pass the call back over to Omer. Thank you.

Omer Keilaf
CEO, Innoviz

Okay. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. I just wanted to take a minute to give you a quick advertisement for CES. We're excited to meet with both customers and investors in January at the conference. Without saying too much before the event, we plan to highlight not just our technology, but some of our actual products that we are integrated on. We will showcase some of the capabilities of our new Innoviz 360 LiDAR, which is going to be an exciting new addition to our product suite and an important part of our continued growth in both the automotive and non-automotive market. For investors that are looking to connect at the event, please feel free to reach out to our IR department directly through the email address on this slide or in the press list.

We will help you find the time to visit the booth and meet the team. Okay. With that said, I'm excited with where Innoviz stands today and the progress we've made over this quarter. Thank you for joining us. With that, we can end the call. Thank you very much.

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