Chinese facial recognition player raises $460m

The Russia-China Investment Fund – a PE vehicle backed by sovereign wealth funds from the two countries – also participated, alongside strategic investors such as Alibaba Group-owned Ant Financial, Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology, and South Korea's SK Group. China's Sunshine Insurance Group and BHR Partners came in as new investors. Foxconn said it put in $20 million. 

The company claims this is the largest private funding round for an artificial intelligence company globally, surpassing the $410 million raised by another Chinese artificial intelligence company, SenseTime, three months ago.

Also known as Face++, Megvii develops facial scanning, recognition and analysis technology, serving the customers like China’s Ministry of Public security, Ant Financial, China Merchants Bank, and Lenovo Group.

The start-up received seed funding from Chinese incubator Legend Star and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in 2012. Sinovation Ventures provided a Series A round one year later. In 2015, Megvii completed a $47 million Series B round across two tranches, including $22 million from Qiming Venture Partners and Sinovation.

The company opened its first overseas R&D center in the US four months ago, which is headed by Jue Wang, formerly Adobe's principal scientist. With the fresh funding, Megvii will accelerate the application of its technology to mobile phones and urban environments, with a view to supporting the development of smart cities.  

The China State-owned Venture Capital Fund was set up in August of last year by China Reform Holdings Corporation, with a target size of RMB200 billion ($30 billion). It seeks to facilitate industry upgrades by backing Chinese technology companies.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Technology
• Expansion
• China
• TMT
• Venture
• Growth capital
• Foxconn Technology Group