Chinese AI Unicorn SenseTime to Go Public in Hong Kong on Thursday

BEIJING, December 29 (TMTPOST) — Chinese AI unicorn SenseTime announced that its Hong Kong shares will enter into trading on Thursday, with each share priced at HK$3.85.

The company is expected to raise HK$5.775 billion (about US$740 million).

SenseTime is primarily engaged in computer vision and deep learning technologies that are used in an array of sectors including smart business, smart city, intelligent vehicles and smart lifestyle. The company has advantages in technologies like facial recognition, medical imaging, video processing, autonomous driving and remote sensing, etc.

The company previously delayed its Hong Kong IPO over U.S. blacklisting on December 10, just days ahead of its planned IPO. The U.S. Treasury placed SenseTime on a list of “Chinese military-industrial complex companies”, accusing SenseTime of enabling human rights violation. The blacklisting prevents investors from the United States from investing in SenseTime’s IPO.

SenseTime originally aimed to raise US$767 million through its Hong Kong IPO. The company was planning to sell 1.5 billion shares within a price range of HK$3.85 to HK$3.99 per share in the IPO. China International Capital Corp., Haitong International Securities Group Ltd. and HSBC Holdings Plc were the joint sponsors for the first-time share sale.

See also: SenseTime to Delay Hong Kong IPO Over U.S. Blacklisting

SenseTime said that it had a “clear path to profitability” in a press conference in December. According to SenseTime’s fiscal report, the company’s revenue in 2020 grew to 3.45 billion yuan from 3.03 billion yuan in 2019 and 1.85 billion yuan in 2018. The company registered net losses in 2018, 2019, 2020 and the first half of 2021 of 3.43 billion yuan, 4.96 billion yuan, 12.15 billion yuan and 3.71 billion yuan respectively.

Founded in 2014, SenseTime is currently the world’s most valuable artificial intelligence unicorn startup, valued at over US$7.7 billion. The company was established by Tang Xiao"ou, a professor of the Department of Information Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and computer scientist Xu Li, among others.

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