Bejiing, China – May 31, 2018 – SenseTime, China’s leading artificial intelligence (AI) company, has announced the completion of its US$620 million series C+ funding round, led by prominent investment firms such as Fidelity International, Hopu Capital, Silver Lake and Tiger Global. Qualcomm Ventures and other investment firms and strategic investors participated. Thanks to yet another successful round of funding, SenseTime now enjoys a total financing of more than US$1.6 billion and a valuation of over US$4.5 billion, maintaining its position as the world’s largest and most valuable AI unicorn.
Having achieved profitability in 2017, SenseTime has rapidly deployed its AI technology and applications in smart cities, smartphones, Internet entertainment, automobiles, finance, retail, and other industries. Recently, the company launched the SenseDrive driver monitoring system and many other innovative products. It also launched SenseAR, China’s first and only locally developed augmented reality platform, which effectively disrupts the global field of AR engines.
For the last three consecutive years, SenseTime has upheld a year-on-year growth rate of 400% as it has rapidly implemented its technology across industries. This year up until May, its business contract revenue has increased by more than 10-fold so far. In the past 1.5 months or so, SenseTime signed an agreement with Shanghai Shentong Metro Group, the largest subway operator in China, to deploy AI solutions for metro traffic monitoring. SenseTime also signed a strategic agreement with the city of Chengdu to establish a regional headquarters, aligning with the Belt and Road initiative to expand and develop the western China market. Moreover, the company recently joined hands with Alibaba and Hong Kong Science & Technology Park to establish The HK AI Laboratory to help Hong Kong transform into an international center of science and innovation.
In the field of education, SenseTime and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) jointly formed an AI Alliance to advance AI academic research and nurture innovation breakthroughs. SenseTime also created the world’s first AI textbook for secondary schools, which will be deployed in more than 40 domestic high schools across China, among them Tsinghua University and Shanghai Jiaotong University affiliated high schools; the company will also begin the design of AI-driven courses and lab experiments to further promote and realize the technology’s potential in education.
With the latest fundraising, SenseTime will continue to invest in R & D and talents. Standing solidly on the treble of technology, business and capital, SenseTime is propelling the AI innovation capacity and industry to new heights.
About SenseTime
SenseTime is the world’s most valuable artificial intelligence (AI) unicorn focused on computer vision and deep learning technologies. Its leading AI technologies have powered many industries such as smart city, smartphone, mobile Internet, automobile, finance, retail, and robotics, etc. Its core technologies include face recognition, image recognition, character recognition, medical image recognition, video analysis and autonomous driving.
SenseTime boasts more than 700 leading strategic partners and customers including MIT, CUHK, Qualcomm, NVIDIA, Honda, Alibaba, Suning, China Mobile, UnionPay, Wanda, HNA, Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo, Weibo, iFLYTEK, and so forth.
In May 2018, SenseTime raised $620 million in its series C+ round of funding. The company now enjoys a total financing of more than US$1.6 billion and a valuation of over US$4.5 billion, maintaining its position as the world’s largest and most valuable AI unicorn. The company has offices in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Kyoto, Tokyo and Singapore.
Read our article about SenseTime here.
