Unmanned road testing approved, combined with first-quarter profits, Cao Cao Mobility enters a moment of valuation reassessment

Ask AI · How Will Robotaxi Autonomous Testing Reshape the Shared Mobility Industry Landscape?

Cover Source | Company Provided Image

On April 1st, Cao Cao Mobility received approval from relevant regulatory authorities, becoming the first company in Hangzhou to conduct Robotaxi autonomous road testing. This milestone signifies a breakthrough in its Robotaxi technology capabilities, officially entering a new phase of autonomous operation.

Just a few days ago, Cao Cao Mobility announced its full-year 2025 performance. Data shows that the company’s service coverage has expanded to 195 cities nationwide, with full-year revenue reaching 20.2 billion yuan, a 38% increase year-over-year; gross profit margin rose to 9.4%, up 1.3 percentage points.

More notably, the Q4 financial data shows the company’s adjusted net profit turning positive, achieving a historic single-quarter turnaround from loss to profit. Meanwhile, cash flow indicators also sent positive signals, with the company’s annual operating cash flow increasing by 60.3% year-over-year. This means Cao Cao Mobility has completely moved beyond the stage of relying on external funding and now possesses genuine self-sustaining and endogenous growth capabilities.

In China’s shared mobility landscape, Cao Cao Mobility has always been a unique presence. It is not only a pioneer in customized vehicle models but also Geely Holding’s “ultimate move” in the trillion-yuan Robotaxi track. This industry synergy endows it with the underlying logic to reshape the cost structure of mobility.

So, how has Cao Cao Mobility achieved profitability turnaround? How will Robotaxi reshape the company’s long-term value?

Profitability Turning Point Confirmed

From continuous losses to a single-quarter profit, the fundamental change in Cao Cao Mobility’s profit structure is mainly due to a strong increase in gross margin. But what are the drivers behind Cao Cao Mobility’s gross margin growth?

Using the simplified profit model “Gross Margin = [1 - (Sales and Marketing Expenses) / GTV]” as a basis to analyze Cao Cao Mobility’s financial reports, it becomes clear that its strong gross margin rebound is primarily determined by the following three factors:

1. Scale effects and brand premium becoming evident. Specifically, the company’s average monthly active users reached 41.3 million, up 43.9% year-over-year; average monthly active drivers reached 631k, up 35.4%.

2. Efficiency improvements enabled by AI. According to disclosures, its transaction engine “Cao Cao Brain” continuously applies AI technology to optimize algorithms, improving order dispatch efficiency. User subsidies are a significant cost component for Cao Cao Mobility, so reductions in this area have also strongly contributed to gross margin recovery.

3. Depreciation amortization effects under the customized vehicle model. Cao Cao Mobility’s unique customized vehicle model involves its own fleet incurring relatively fixed depreciation costs, which are sensitive to scale effects. As daily platform order volume increases significantly, vehicle utilization rises, effectively spreading out depreciation costs per vehicle. Although depreciation expenses constitute a small part of Cao Cao Mobility’s cost structure, they still contribute to gross margin improvement.

Additionally, from the expense ratio perspective, as operational efficiency improves across the board, cost optimization also frees up some profit space. Regarding sales expense ratio, in the context of the entire shared mobility industry’s online aggregation platform order growth, Cao Cao Mobility’s sales expense ratio remains roughly flat, reflecting its brand premium.

Overall, whether it’s the front-end “volume and price” growth or the back-end “cost and expense” optimization, Cao Cao Mobility is rapidly establishing a healthy profit cycle. Under this increasingly clear “scissors effect,” long-term profit margin improvement is no longer in doubt.

Customized Vehicle Model Runs “Alpha”

According to data from Forrester, the growth rate of China’s shared mobility market in 2025 is about 24%. Cao Cao Mobility, with a GTV growth rate of 38%, outperforms the industry average. The core engine remains its long-standing “customized vehicle” model. As of December 31, 2025, Cao Cao Mobility had over 38k customized vehicles in 31 cities.

The essence of the customized vehicle model is leveraging Geely Holding’s manufacturing capabilities to provide drivers with specially designed vehicles for mobility services, thereby reducing drivers’ total cost of ownership (TCO) and enhancing passenger experience.

This experience-based reduction directly consolidates platform goodwill assets. With high-quality service, Cao Cao Mobility has been rated “Best Service Reputation” in nine user surveys from Q4 2023 to Q4 2025 among China’s major shared mobility platforms.

This advantage is especially prominent in the current “traffic volume competition” of the “aggregation platform” model. Since front-end traffic entry points are highly concentrated, the quality of fulfillment at the back end becomes a “black box.” Amid massive homogeneous supply of capacity, Cao Cao Mobility’s control over customized vehicles and standardized services provides a scarce “fulfillment certainty,” creating a strong brand recognition within the aggregation ecosystem, successfully capturing user mindshare and influencing user choices invisibly.

Beyond capturing user mindshare, the customized vehicle model also remains a key strategy for Cao Cao Mobility’s ongoing city expansion. Currently, the company adopts a “light-asset on capacity side + customized vehicle expansion in cities” model to sustain growth. In 2025, by selling customized vehicles to capacity partners, the company operated in 195 cities, which is another major growth driver.

Robotaxi Sets the Valuation Ceiling

If the customized vehicle model and refined operations are Cao Cao Mobility’s current foundation, then Robotaxi is the ceiling that will determine its valuation over the next decade.

2026 will be a pivotal year for accelerating Robotaxi commercialization. In North America, Tesla officially launched driverless Robotaxi services in Austin, Texas, and plans to mass-produce the dedicated autonomous taxi Cybercab by April 2026. Another giant, Waymo, completed a $16 billion funding round in February 2026, with a post-investment valuation of $126 billion, aiming to reach 1 million weekly orders by the end of 2026—doubling 2025’s volume.

The domestic Robotaxi market is also progressing rapidly, with Cao Cao Mobility occupying a unique niche.

A complete Robotaxi commercialization chain includes vehicle manufacturing, autonomous driving technology R&D, and fleet operation. Domestic players often focus on one segment, but Cao Cao Mobility’s “smart customized vehicles + intelligent driving technology + smart operations” integrated development strategy makes it one of the few global tech mobility platforms with all Robotaxi elements.

Looking at its deployment history, in February 2025, the company launched Cao Cao Zhixing autonomous driving platform in Suzhou and Hangzhou, beginning deployment and pilot testing of Robotaxi 1.0 solutions.

Less than a year later, in December 2025, the company announced Robotaxi 2.0 solutions, starting to deploy the second-generation Robotaxi, exploring the transition from driver safety operators to fully autonomous operations, roughly in line with companies like Tesla.

In terms of operational scale, as of the announcement, Cao Cao Mobility has deployed over 100 Robotaxis. 2026 is expected to be a “volume-up” period for Cao Cao’s Robotaxi.

According to disclosures, Cao Cao Mobility plans to accelerate deployment of Robotaxi services domestically and internationally, adding more vehicles. Domestically, it aims to expand into more cities for large-scale Robotaxi operations; internationally, it has reached strategic cooperation with Abu Dhabi Investment Office and established a division to develop overseas Robotaxi markets. The company is also exploring Robotaxi development in Hong Kong.

On the technological front, leveraging its partnership with Geely Holding, Cao Cao Mobility is accelerating the development of its third-generation L4 fully customized Robotaxi, which is scheduled to be unveiled this year.

For Cao Cao Mobility, Robotaxi’s significance is not just about telling an exciting tech story but about this trillion-yuan potential market forming a high degree of synergy with its existing shared mobility network. This is also the core reason why Geely Holding chose Cao Cao Mobility as the primary platform for exploring future mobility and commercializing Robotaxi operations.

Turning a profit for the first time is just the beginning. With ongoing financial optimization and the gradual commercialization of Robotaxi, Cao Cao Mobility is telling a new, tech-driven mobility story to the capital markets.

Disclaimer: