Lidar for Patriots: Ouster Stock Tripled in 2025 — What’s Next?

High margins, high losses, and no room for error

Ouster has tripled this year, but behind the rally is a company with strong gross margins, persistent $20M quarterly losses, and a valuation that already assumes flawless execution.

It’s up 150%, yet still flies under most investors’ radars.It makes lidars, those devices that help machines navigate the world, a critical piece of self-driving stacks — at least for Waymo and just about everyone else except Tesla. But we’re not going to dive into the technical weeds of autonomous vehicles here, because Ouster actually isn’t in that game.

This is a niche story. Its main lidar customers aren’t global automakers, but rather construction-equipment makers and a grab bag of smaller names: Forterra, Flyability, Avikus, Dunakontroll. Not exactly a Fortune 100 lineup.

Source: Ouster

At its core, Ouster is a textbook American startup: it complains about tariffs, is constantly tangled up in litigation, and still spends more than it makes.

Ouster in 3 lines

🔹 Digital Lidar Technology
OS-series sensors (OS0, OS1, OS2) plus Velodyne legacy products. This hardware still makes up the bulk of revenue, valued for accuracy and reliability in niche use cases like construction, drones, and infrastructure.

🔹 AI Software Solutions
Gemini and BlueCity platforms that turn lidar data into traffic and object analytics. A SaaS layer designed to move the company beyond one-off hardware sales into recurring revenue.

🔹 Autonomy Across Industries
Not in mass-market automotive (where China dominates), but in niches: construction equipment (Forterra), inspection drones (Flyability), marine autonomy (Avikus), and smart-city infrastructure (BlueCity). Clients are small, but the verticals are diverse.