SenseTime IPO Reopens as Large AI Company Goes public in Hong Kong
Michael Spencer
A.I. Writer, researcher and curator - full-time Newsletter publication manager.
I write about Venture Capital, startups and IPOs here at the IPOTimes. https://ipotimes.substack.com/
China really cares about A.I. and it shows. SenseTime has relaunched its Hong Kong IPO, lining up nine cornerstone investors to anchor its fundraising plan as it excludes US investors.
On December 13th, 2021 the U.S. Treasury added?SenseTime?to a list of “Chinese military-industrial complex companies,” accusing it of having developed a facial recognition program that can determine a target’s ethnicity, with a particular focus on identifying ethnic Uyghurs.
However the U.S. cannot slow down Chinese A.I. startups which the U.S. doesn’t have. China is catching up in AI and its economy will surpass that of the U.S. in the coming years and decade.
China is moving many of its best companies to Hong Kong, with the risk of Chinese ADRs being excluded from the U.S. stock exchanges.
I like to follow venture capital stories and this is one of the major events of 2021. China International Capital Corp., Haitong International Securities Group Ltd. and HSBC Holdings Plc are listed in the prospectus as joint sponsors. Guotai Junan Securities (Hong Kong) Ltd. and BOCOM International Securities Ltd. ceased to be joint bookrunners, joint lead managers and underwriters in the revised filing.
The firm responded saying the U.S. government’s accusations were “unfounded and reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of our company.”
The artificial intelligence (AI) company, founded by a group of professors from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) is one of the world’s leaders in facial recognition technology, the majority of which are startups in China.
China's Coming Neo-Surveillance Capitalism
China’s Neo Surveillance Capitalism system is well positioned to compete globally against BigTech in the years ahead.
ByteDance is seeing gains in digital advertising and E-commerce like no company in the world today. SenseTime is just another firm of a new tech dynasty coming out of China after Silicon Valley has yet to produce new winners as consolidation has taken place without much antitrust regulation.
SenseTime still plans to sell 1.5 billion shares at a price range of HK$3.85 to HK$3.99, seeking to raise as much as $767 million. All of this without U.S investors.
The U.S. Treasury added?SenseTime?to a list of “Chinese military-industrial complex companies,” accusing it of having developed a facial recognition program that can determine a target’s ethnicity, with a particular focus on identifying ethnic Uyghurs. American police systems use the same technology they buy from American companies primarily. They also racially profile ethnic minorities who are widely believed to be treated differently by American policy enforcement systems.
SenseTime, based in both Shanghai and Hong Kong, will also amend its prospectus and issue refunds to retail investors, according to a?filing?made to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
A.I. Startups Caught Between Worlds and the Bifurcation of the Internet
I write about Venture Capital, startups and IPOs here at the IPOTimes. https://ipotimes.substack.com/
SenseTime appears caught?between politics and regulation. “We strongly oppose the designation and accusations that have been made in connection with it,” SenseTime said in a statement. “The accusations are unfounded and reflect a fundamental misperception of our company. We regret to have been caught in the middle of geopolitical tension.”
In 2019, SenseTime was placed on the?U.S. Entity List?that blocked it from doing business with American companies. Tang Xiao’ou, the billionaire professor who cofounded SenseTime with two of his Ph.D. students in 2014 is very impressive and shows that Chinese A.I. talent are about to have a golden age of new A.I. companies. Many of its top competitors are in China.
Founded in 2014, SenseTime was christened as one of China’s four “AI Dragons” alongside Megvii, CloudWalk and Yitu. In the second half of the 2010s, their algorithms found much demand from businesses and governments hoping to turn real-life data into actionable insights. That’s not unlikely how the U.S. Government uses companies like Palantir, Microsoft, C3.AI or AWS for National Defense and related activities.
CCTV is much more integrated in China, creating a real-time web of facial recognition all over the country and especially in major cities there. Cameras embedded with their AI models watch city streets 24 hours a day. Malls use their sensing solutions to track and predict crowds on the premises.
Beijing is making it harder for companies with sensitive data to go public outside China. And regulators in the West are wary of facial recognition companies that could aid mass surveillance. However Amazon and Microsoft already sold similar tech to the Police years ago.
To date, the company has raised a staggering $5.2 billion in funding through 12 rounds. Its biggest outside shareholders include SoftBank Vision Fund and Alibaba’s Taobao. Softbank is one of the biggest AI funders in the world and is Japan based.
SenseTime spends a large chunk of its capital on research and development, which cost it more than 5 billion yuan ($780 million) between 2018 and 2020, according to its?prospectus. If Chinese companies like ByteDance and Nio are able to go even more global in 2022, more firms will follow. This is all very inevitable as China catches up with the U.S. in technology and A.I.
I write about Venture Capital, startups and IPOs here at the IPOTimes. https://ipotimes.substack.com/