Science Park Hong Kong – this is where SenseTime was founded in October 2014. After a follow up round of funding in 2018, SenseTime is now the most valuable artificial intelligence company in the world with valuations of over $4.5 billion. While studying at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, my entrepreneurship class and I had the opportunity to meet fellow Alumni who founded the company. Experiencing the state of the art technology in facial recognition made me realise how far behind competitors seem to be (remember how Face ID of the new iPhone X failed during Apple’s keynote speech?). So why is this such big news? First of all, it reveals how China emphasises the technological development as well as importance in AI. Especially, the Chinese government aims to make the country the world leader in AI technology by 2030. It is claimed that China will become the worlds biggest contributor to the worlds biggest system of surveillance which facial recognition is mainly used for. Second of all, the investment shows that image analysis seems to be one of the most lucrative applications for AI. SenseTime has more than 400 customers providing services such as identity verification for Chinese finance and retail apps. As always, China is not far from conquering the Western world, also in AI technologies. Indeed, SenseTime is planning to open new research facilities within the US. So pay attention Western tech –giants. China is just around the corner. Again.
Sources
https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/30/even-more-money-for-senstime-ai-china/?guccounter=1
