So, you want to build a global fleet of driverless cars? First, you need the cash to fuel the dream. WeRide Inc. (WRD) just showed it's generating plenty, reporting fourth-quarter results that reveal a company hitting the accelerator on its autonomous ambitions.

The headline number is hard to miss: revenue more than doubled, jumping 123% year-over-year to 314 million Chinese yuan, or about $44.9 million. That's the kind of growth that gets investors' attention, especially in a capital-intensive industry like self-driving tech.

But where's the money coming from? The breakdown tells the real story. The company's "Product" revenue segment—which is essentially selling the robotaxis and robobuses themselves—exploded by a staggering 308.9% to $30.2 million. That's the engine of this growth. Meanwhile, the "Service" side, which includes data services and operational support, grew a more modest but still healthy 15.2% to $14.7 million. Digging into the product side, revenue specifically from robotaxis climbed 66.4% to $7.2 million for the quarter.

Now, growing this fast isn't free. Gross profit did surge to $12.8 million from $7.3 million a year ago, but the gross margin actually contracted to 28.5% from 36.5%. This suggests that as WeRide scales up sales, it might be doing so at slightly lower margins, which is a common trade-off in high-growth phases. The bottom line still shows a loss, but it's narrowing: the loss per American Depositary Share (ADS) was 24 cents, an improvement from the 33-cent loss per ADS in the prior-year quarter.

The most interesting part might be what the company is doing with all this momentum. Founder and CEO Tony Han painted a picture of a company going global. "Internationally, we are rolling out a citywide fully driverless robotaxi service in Abu Dhabi," Han said, calling it "a major step toward integrating autonomous transportation into everyday urban mobility." He added that the company has a "pipeline of AV deployments across 12 countries" and is "building a leading global platform."

Back home in China, the story is about adoption. Han noted that registered users "have grown quarter over quarter significantly throughout 2025, demonstrating increasing public acceptance of our services."

Financially, WeRide appears to be in a strong position to fund its expansion. The company ended December with a hefty war chest of 6.97 billion yuan, or roughly $996.4 million, in cash and equivalents. Perhaps signaling confidence in its own value, the board also approved a plan to buy back up to $100 million worth of its Class A shares over the next 12 months, pending shareholder approval.

Investors seemed to like the report. WeRide shares were up 4.92% at $6.66 at the time of publication on Monday.

In short, WeRide's latest earnings show a company that's not just dreaming about a driverless future—it's selling it, one robotaxi at a time, and taking its business model on the road from China to the Middle East and beyond. The question now is whether the revenue growth can continue to outpace the costs of building that global platform.