BEIJING, December 9 (TMTPOST)— There may soon come a new evidence to show the Biden administration is expanding the curbs in Trump-era on Chinese firms in tech industry as China’s largest unicorn in artificial intelligence (AI) sector is said to become the latest victim of such policy attitude.
Source: TMTPOST
The United States is going to announce on Friday a package of sanctions against a wide range of countries to mark that day’s Human Rights Day, including adding Hong Kong-headquartered SenseTime, the world’s most valuable AI company, to its investment blacklist, the Financial Times cited people familiar with the matter. The news came right ahead of SenseTime’s debut in Hong Kong market on December 17. It is said that neither the startup nor banks working for its listing was aware of the U.S. government’s sanction move, which is set to ban Americans from investing in the company and make troubles for the startup’s U.S. investors, among which the private equity firm Silver Lake had agreed to lock some of shares for six months after the IPO.
Earlier this week, SenseTime started the offering to sell 1.5 billion primary shares with the price range of HK$3.85 to HK$3.99 apiece, aiming to raise up to HK$5.985 billion (US$767 million) and bring its valuation to more than HK$100 billion. Hailed as one of Four AI dragons in China, SenseTime has raised a total of US$5.2 billion through twelve funding rounds since founded in 2014, backed by nearly 40 institutions including Alibaba, IDG, SoftBank and the Singapore state investment fund Temasek. After the latest funding in December 2020, the company had been valued about US$12 billion. Prior to the Hong Kong offering, SoftBank, as the biggest institutional investor, holds 14.88% of shares, and Alibaba’s Taobao and Silver Lake have 7.59% and 3.05% respectively, the prospectus showed.
SenseTime is the largest AI software company in Asia as well as the No. 1 computer vision software provider in China by the revenue of 2020, according to a Frost & Sullivan report. As of June 30, its software platforms boast more than 2400 customers, including more than 250 Fortune 500 companies and other listed companies.
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