COGNEX ANNUAL REPORT 2024 TITLE TBD 1. 2024 Annual Report CEO Letter ADVANCED MACHINE VISION MADE EASY Cognex is harnessing artificial intelligence to remove complex and costly programming requirements for our customers and to simplify their overall experience. For our customers, the difficult is indeed becoming easy. In that spirit, our Annual Report — often as hard to write as others’ are to read — has become less complex as well (plus, significantly cheaper). "But wait a second!" you cry out in disbelief. "Where are the parodies, the absurd costumes, the legally questionable pop culture references?" Not to worry, you can rest assured (like our lawyers this year) that we’ll be back to our typical hijinks in more supportive market environments. In the meantime, read on to see how Cognex is making advanced machine vision easy! 2024 PERFORMANCE We began 2024 with the strategic priorities of infusing AI into more of our products, transforming and expanding our sales force, and integrating Moritex, our largest acquisition in company history. I am pleased with the progress we made against these strategic priorities in 2024. We expanded our portfolio of machine vision products powered by world class AI. We successfully executed our sales transformation, deploying a new type of Salesnoid to broaden our sales reach to customers we have traditionally not served. And, we successfully integrated Moritex, which gives us a more complete machine vision solution, increases our exposure to Japan and the semiconductor market, and contributes to our bottom-line. This transaction was accretive to adjusted EPS in 2024, which led to a slight increase in this metric for the year, in an otherwise soft market. Our end market performance was led by Logistics and Semiconductor. Our Logistics business grew by 20%, driven by investments from e-commerce customers who have grown into the footprints they built up during the 2020-2021 boom in spending. We are optimistic this Logistics momentum will continue. Our Semiconductor business had a great year, with significant growth (excluding Moritex), fueled by customers who serve the fast-growing high- bandwidth memory chip market. Semi represented over 10% of our revenue this year. Our other factory automation end markets remained challenged but did stabilize over the course of the year. By the end of 2024, the Purchasing Manager’s Index (PMI) was in contraction territory in the U.S. for 25 of the previous 26 months, and in Europe for 30 straight months. In this prolonged slowdown, we have seen weak global investment across industrial automation, including machine vision. 2. Our Automotive business, for instance, declined by 14% (excluding Moritex). In fact, this year was the worst environment for auto investment I have seen since Henry Ford the global financial crisis. Our customers have indicated that slow consumer EV demand coupled with an overcapacity of supply led to a significant decline in investment in EV batteries, which badly missed our original expectations entering the year. Long-term, however, we believe there is still great growth opportunity here and we remain well positioned to capitalize on a recovery. AI AT COGNEX Make no mistake, the easy and intuitive customer experience we deliver to our customers is the product of painstaking, excruciating — I mean, truly back-breaking stuff — advanced engineering, and that includes AI. It won’t be long before the makers of toaster pastries claim to be joining the AI revolution, but we’ve been here from the beginning. We’re pretty much the godfather of AI one of the original pioneers of AI. Today, Cognex is defining the leading edge of deploying AI technology across discrete manufacturing and logistics applications, while simultaneously expanding market opportunities. For an overview of our extensive product development efforts this year, take a look at the attached 40-slide PowerPoint following highlights: • In April, Cognex launched the In-Sight® L38, the world’s first ever AI-based 3D smart camera. The L38 utilizes pre-trained AI models to replace complex programming steps, making initial set-up easier than ever. This system can be trained to automate a task with as few as 5-10 labeled images, far less than prior rules-based coding requirements. • In August, we launched an AI-driven counting tool within our In-Sight SnAPP™ sensor that allows manufacturers to easily automate previously time consuming and error-prone tasks such as assembly verification and quantity checks. This advanced AI functionality increases task accuracy while greatly improving the overall user experience. • In Q3, we introduced AI-assisted labeling functionality in our powerful VisionPro® Deep Learning software. This tool allows users to cut out any object in any image in just a single click, reducing labeling time by up to 90%. • By December, we notched an additional software milestone by launching VisionPro® Deep Learning 4.0, our first product to utilize Transformer models. These powerful AI models, which power the popular large language models (LLMs) we are all familiar with, help push our products' ease of use to even higher levels. Technology leadership has always been one of Cognex’s core competitive advantages — it’s why engineers make up over half of our workforce! In 2024 we strengthened our technology position further by investing $140 million in research, development, and engineering to expand our company-wide count of issued and pending patents to over 1,400. 3. ALIGNING OUR SALES FORCE WITH OUR PRODUCTS We could spend all day sitting around playing with our sophisticated technology, but we’ve found it’s more profitable to sell it to other people. While Cognex has long excelled at solving the most challenging problems for the most sophisticated manufacturers, we are now more effectively competing across a broader group of customers. Reaching this larger market opportunity required growing our direct sales force. In 2024, our first cohort of new Salesnoids entered the field, notching over 80,000 customer visits, adding more than 3,000 new customers, and booking business at an annualized run-rate of over $50 million. They have also proven to be true team players, referring nearly $10 million in business to our more technical account sales engineers. You may be wondering, “That’s fine, but do they also identify new use cases for your AI-embedded products within the existing customer base?” The answer is yes, they do that too. While we are still in the early stages of our sales force transformation and expansion, we are encouraged by the sales activity and the growing number of customer relationships these Salesnoids are driving. OUR NEW CFO’S PRIORITIES: EASY AS 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, & 6 This year, Dennis Fehr joined Cognex as our CFO. With over 20 years of finance leadership and the last six years as a CFO, Dennis brings a wealth of experience to our finance organization. In his new role, Dennis has laid out three easily understood key priorities: 1. Driving profitability towards our 30%+ adjusted operating margin target 2. Increasing capital efficiency 3. Improving investor communication Dennis has already strengthened our focus on cost and operational efficiency as well as working capital management. Dennis is truly a menace to operating expenses. These results are already visible as we generated over $100 million of free cash flow in the back-half of the year. IT’S EASY: CULTURE IS OUR ENGINE At Cognex, we take our work seriously but not ourselves (we dressed up as Harry Potter characters last year, for crying out loud). Our culture — Work Hard! Play Hard! Move Fast! — drives everything we do and is the key to attracting and retaining smart, energetic, creative Cognoids. It’s no surprise our employee turnover is well below the average of our peers. By establishing Ministers of Culture in every office, ReCOGnition programs to celebrate those exemplifying our company values, and Play Hard events to foster collaboration, we’ve built and nurtured a culture that powers our success and, we believe, drives financial returns for our shareholders. Oh, and I should mention, one thing we never cut, no matter the market environment, is the Play Hard budget for our hardworking Cognoids! SECULAR GROWTH DRIVERS Predicting the future is the one task we haven’t been able to make any easier, but despite the many storms we have faced over the past three years, we are optimistic about the long-term growth opportunity within machine vision, and the many secular drivers supporting it: 1. As AI continues to penetrate machine vision, our products will continue to become easier to set up and deploy, expanding our potential customer footprint. 2. An estimated 35 million factory workers around the world are employed in manual inspection tasks that could be accomplished faster and more accurately with industrial machine vision. 3. Labor costs are rising while labor productivity is stagnating — a situation that will increase reliance on machine vision. 4. Globally, less than 25% of warehouses are automated — representing a big opportunity to increase adoption in Logistics. 5. As a global company capable of supporting customers across geographies, we are well placed to benefit from re-shoring or other changes to manufacturing footprints. SUMMARY I am proud of Cognoids’ perseverance this year and the incredible products we are building and launching. As our AI-embedded products become more powerful and easier to use, we aim to reach an increasingly broad base of customers. We are well-aligned with large secular trends, and we will Work Hard, Move Fast, and continue to invest in innovation and our culture to put Cognex in a strong position to drive long-term results. 4. SHAREHOLDER INFORMATION 2024 Cognex Board of Directors Anthony Sun Former Managing General Partner, Venrock Associates Robert J. Willett President and Chief Executive Officer, Cognex Corporation Sachin S. Lawande President and Chief Executive Officer, Visteon Corporation John T.C. Lee President and Chief Executive Officer, MKS Instruments, Inc. Angelos Papadimitriou Chairman, Athena Ventures Dianne M. Parrotte Independent Consultant Marjorie T. Sennett Former Managing Director, Farallon Capital Management, LLC 2024 Cognex Executive Officers Robert J. Willett President and Chief Executive Officer, Cognex Corporation Dennis Fehr Senior Vice President of Finance and Chief Financial Officer Sheila DiPalma Executive Vice President of Employee Services Carl Gerst Executive Vice President, Vision and ID Products Joerg Kuechen Senior Vice President, Advanced Vision Technology and Chief Technology Officer Transfer Agent Computershare www.computershare.com/investor Outside Legal Counsel Goodwin Procter LLP Boston, Massachusetts Independent Auditors Grant Thornton LLP Boston, Massachusetts Corporate Headquarters Cognex Corporation One Vision Drive Natick, Massachusetts 01760 Telephone: 508-650-3000 www.cognex.com A copy of the Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission is available free of charge upon written request to Cognex Investor Relations at the address above, or via online request at www.cognex.com/investor. Forward-Looking Statements This report, including the CEO’s letter, may contain “forward- looking statements” within the meaning of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. For further information, please see the section entitled “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” in the Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC. A discussion regarding risks associated with forward-looking statements is included under the heading “Forward-Looking Statements.” All information in this report is subject to change without notice. Cognex, In-Sight, DataMan, and VisionPro are registered trademarks and Moritex, L38, and SnAPP are trademarks of Cognex. TikTok is a trademark of TikTok Ltd. © 2025 Cognex Corporation. All rights reserved.