China's SenseTime closes $620m Series C-plus round

The round was led by Fidelity International, Hopu Investment, Silver Lake, and Tiger Global Management. Qualcomm Ventures also participated alongside other financial and strategic investors, according to a statement. Alibaba Group led the previous round – of $600 million – in April, accompanied by the likes of Temasek Holdings and Chinese consumer electronics retailer Suning. Total funding now stands at more than $1.6 billion.

SenseTime is the world’s most valuable AI start-up focused on computer vision and deep learning technologies. Its proprietary deep learning platform – known as Parrots – comprises a strong internal computation capability, with over 8,000 different types of graphics processing units (GPUs).

The technology has a range of facial recognition application across intelligent video analytics and identity verification, while in the automobile space, SenseTime has developed monitoring systems that track driver tiredness and road conditions and provide collision warnings. There is also augmented reality rendering for video, mobile image processing solutions, and user information tracking systems for interactive games that enable targeted advertising.

The company claims to have achieved year-on-year revenue growth of 400% for the last three years and it turned a profit for the first time in 2017. Customers are being signed up in areas such as smart cities, smart phones, internet entertainment, automobiles, finance, and retail. It has supplied AI chips to China Mobile and Xiaomi, helped Suning roll out unmanned retail stores that use facial recognition technology, and it will provide traffic monitoring solutions for the Shanghai subway.

SenseTime was formed in 2014 by Xiao’ou Tang, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, alongside two PhD students – Li Xu and Bing Xu – and Fan Yang, formerly a software development engineer at Microsoft. IDG Capital and StarVC were early investors, providing a total of $20 million in a Series A round across two tranches in late 2014 and early 2016.

CDH Investments led the first tranche of a Series B round worth $120 million in December 2016, joined by Dalian Wanda Group, IDG, and StarVC. A second tranche of $290 million, led by Sailing Capital, closed six months later. There were as many as 20 additional participants in the Series B – including Morningside Venture Capital, China International Capital Corporation, Advantech Capital, and China Renaissance – which took the company’s valuation above $2 billion.

A host of other Chinese AI developers have received PE and VC funding. Megvii Technology, best known for its Face++ facial recognition technology, is arguably the closest to SenseTime. The company received a $460 million Series C round last November led by China State-owned Venture Capital Fund. More niche operators range from healthcare-focused Yitu Technology to AI chipmaker Shanghai ThinkForce Electronic Technology.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Expansion
• Technology
• China
• artificial intelligence
• Growth capital
• Fidelity
• Tiger Global Management
• Hopu Investment Management
• Silver Lake