Director, Head of Research, Smartkarma

Pranav Rao

Director, Head of Research

Smartkarma

Smartkarma unites the fragmented investment industry, connecting institutional investors, independent research providers, and corporates within a single network.

Research Reinvented

Event-Driven

<ul>
<li>Welcome to Curator’s Cut - a fortnightly roundup of standout themes from the 1,200+ insights shared on Smartkarma.</li>
<li>In this cut, we track the fitness wave across Asia, why Thailand is the one Asian market foreign investors are buying, and the wave of consolidation reshaping mobility-tech.</li>
<li>Want to dig deeper? Comment or message with the themes you'd like to see highlighted next.</li>
</ul>


Welcome to Curator’s Cut - a fortnightly roundup of standout themes from the 1,200+ insights shared on Smartkarma.
In this cut, we track the fitness wave across Asia, why Thailand is the one Asian market foreign investors are buying, and the wave of consolidation reshaping mobility-tech.
Want to dig deeper? Comment or message with the themes you'd like to see highlighted next.


Curator's Cut: Asia Gets Fit, Thailand Bucks the Asia Sell-Off & Mobility-Tech Consolidates

Private Markets, Angel and Secondary Investing, Sacra

Sacra

Private Markets, Angel and Secondary Investing

Bringing transparency to private markets so investors, founders, and employees can build on conviction. Sacra delivers deeply researched insights on the private companies shaping tomorrow's markets. By surfacing the data, context, and operator perspective that are missing from private markets today, we help secondary buyers and sellers price equity accurately and unlock liquidity for the people building these businesses.

Private Capital Markets

<ul>
<li>Two companies emerged from the first wave with the balance sheets and data to lead: Waymo, backed by $27B+ in cumulative Alphabet funding and generating a Sacra-estimated $355M in annualized revenue as of February 2026 across ~500,000 weekly paid rides in 11 U.S. cities, and Tesla, which is building its robotaxi on top of a consumer self-driving fleet of 7M+ vehicles generating ~1 billion miles of driving data per month.</li>
<li>The market is sorting into four layers: 1) vertically integrated robotaxi operators like Waymo, Tesla and Zoox that own the vehicle, the autonomy stack, the fleet and the customer relationship, 2) B2B software companies that license the AI driving brain to OEMs like Wayve, Applied Intuition, Mobileye and Nuro, 3) demand aggregators like Uber that route riders to whichever autonomous vehicle is nearest, and 4) fleet infrastructure providers like Moove ($400M ARR in June 2025, up from $275M in 2024), Vay and Avis that finance, maintain and operate the physical cars.</li>
<li>While Uber is profitable with a demand-aggregation model that can plug in any autonomous vehicle, Waymo has the most advanced full-stack robotaxi operation but burns ~$5B+ a year, a gap that explains their frenemy partnership dynamics where Waymo trades a cut of every Uber-routed fare for the demand density it needs while it races to drive vehicle costs down from ~$175K per Jaguar I-PACE toward a target of sub-$50K with a prospective Hyundai deal while pushing utilization from 35% toward 55%+.</li>
</ul>


Two companies emerged from the first wave with the balance sheets and data to lead: Waymo, backed by $27B+ in cumulative Alphabet funding and generating a Sacra-estimated $355M in annualized revenue as of February 2026 across ~500,000 weekly paid rides in 11 U.S. cities, and Tesla, which is building its robotaxi on top of a consumer self-driving fleet of 7M+ vehicles generating ~1 billion miles of driving data per month.
The market is sorting into four layers: 1) vertically integrated robotaxi operators like Waymo, Tesla and Zoox that own the vehicle, the autonomy stack, the fleet and the customer relationship, 2) B2B software companies that license the AI driving brain to OEMs like Wayve, Applied Intuition, Mobileye and Nuro, 3) demand aggregators like Uber that route riders to whichever autonomous vehicle is nearest, and 4) fleet infrastructure providers like Moove ($400M ARR in June 2025, up from $275M in 2024), Vay and Avis that finance, maintain and operate the physical cars.
While Uber is profitable with a demand-aggregation model that can plug in any autonomous vehicle, Waymo has the most advanced full-stack robotaxi operation but burns ~$5B+ a year, a gap that explains their frenemy partnership dynamics where Waymo trades a cut of every Uber-routed fare for the demand density it needs while it races to drive vehicle costs down from ~$175K per Jaguar I-PACE toward a target of sub-$50K with a prospective Hyundai deal while pushing utilization from 35% toward 55%+.


Asian Hedge Fund Manager, Long Short Equity, Macro

David Mudd

Equity Bottom-Up

<ul>
<li>
<a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/didi-chuxing-inc" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:27467:1" rel="noopener">DiDi Global (DIDI US)</a> has begun to generate positive EBITDA after several challenging years post-IPO.  With a high degree of operating leverage, the company is poised to grow quickly.
</li>
<li>Didi which maintains a 70% market share in the ride-hailing industry in China is expanding into Tier 3 cities where there is a large untapped opportunity.</li>
<li>The company has indicated that it wants to list in Hong Kong in 2025 providing a catalyst for share price re-rating next year.</li>
</ul>



DiDi Global (DIDI US) has begun to generate positive EBITDA after several challenging years post-IPO.  With a high degree of operating leverage, the company is poised to grow quickly.

Didi which maintains a 70% market share in the ride-hailing industry in China is expanding into Tier 3 cities where there is a large untapped opportunity.
The company has indicated that it wants to list in Hong Kong in 2025 providing a catalyst for share price re-rating next year.


2025 High Conviction Idea - DIDI Global, Smooth Ride to Higher Profits

Head of Research, IPOs & Placements, Aequitas Research

Sumeet Singh

Head of Research, IPOs & Placements

IPOs and Placements coverage across Asia Pacific

Aequitas Research

We cover all listing across the Asia Pacific along with follow-up placements. As of Dec 2020, our team had covered 539 IPOs with a hit rate of 73.5% and 685 placements with a hit rate of 66.8%.

We combine fundamental bottom-up views with our proprietary quantitative framework to provide a holistic coverage across new listings and placements. Our coverage includes pre-IPO notes before the deal is launched, follow-up analysis once the deal is live and post-listing trading analysis as well.

<ul>
<li>
<a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/pony-ai-inc" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:44035:1" rel="noopener">Pony AI (PONY US)</a> raised around US$260m in its upsized US ADR listing in Nov 2024. The lockup on its pre-IPO investors is set to expire soon.</li>
<li>As per Frost &amp; Sullivan, Pony AI was among the first companies in China to obtain licenses to operate fully driverless robotaxis in all four Tier-1 cities in China.</li>
<li>In this note, we will talk about the lockup dynamics and possible placement.</li>
</ul>



Pony AI (PONY US) raised around US$260m in its upsized US ADR listing in Nov 2024. The lockup on its pre-IPO investors is set to expire soon.
As per Frost &amp; Sullivan, Pony AI was among the first companies in China to obtain licenses to operate fully driverless robotaxis in all four Tier-1 cities in China.
In this note, we will talk about the lockup dynamics and possible placement.


Pony AI IPO Lockup - US$4.3bn Lockup Release with Stock at 69x EV/Sales

Asian Equities Analyst, Logistics & Transport, Tracking Traffic

Daniel Hellberg

Asian Equities Analyst, Logistics & Transport

Tracking Traffic

Focusing on Asian logistics, transportation, and travel companies

<ul>
<li>On March 5 Chinese freight platform Full Truck Alliance posted another great set of results</li>
<li>Strong Q424 top-line growth was matched by firm OpEx control, leading to higher margins</li>
<li>We've upped our FY25 earnings numbers; we rate YMM a BUY with a US$17/ADS target</li>
</ul>


On March 5 Chinese freight platform Full Truck Alliance posted another great set of results
Strong Q424 top-line growth was matched by firm OpEx control, leading to higher margins
We've upped our FY25 earnings numbers; we rate YMM a BUY with a US$17/ADS target


Full Truck Alliance Q424 Results: Results > Guidance | New Dividend Policy | TP US$17 Per ADS, BUY

United States

Uber Technologies Inc provides ride hailing services. The Company develops applications for road transportation, navigation, ride sharing, and payment processing solutions. Uber Technologies serves customers worldwide.

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Uber Technologies (UBER US)

Curator's Cut: Asia Gets Fit, Thailand Bucks the Asia Sell-Off & Mobility-Tech Consolidates

In this cut, we track the fitness wave across Asia, why Thailand is the one Asian market foreign investors are buying, and the wave of...

Pranav Rao

Booking.Com Of Robotaxi

TL;DR: After $30B+ burned in the first AV wave, end-to-end neural networks have made autonomous driving viable again with vertically integrated...

Sacra

2025 High Conviction Idea - DIDI Global, Smooth Ride to Higher Profits

Didi's share price has now broken major resistance levels at $5 and $6 on surging volume. The company's profit remains on track to double in 2025....

David Mudd

Pony AI IPO Lockup - US$4.3bn Lockup Release with Stock at 69x EV/Sales

Pony AI (PONY US) raised around US$260m in its upsized US ADR listing in Nov 2024. The lockup on its pre-IPO investors is set to expire soon.

Sumeet Singh

Full Truck Alliance Q424 Results: Results > Guidance | New Dividend Policy | TP US$17 Per ADS, BUY

Full Truck Alliance reported impressive Q4 results on Wednesday in the US, featuring stronger-than-expected revenue growth & expert cost control....

Tracking Traffic

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