China’s leading artificial intelligence company, SenseTime has raised $620 million in its latest Series C+ round of fundraising, being the world’s highest-valued AI company at a valuation of more than $4.5 billion. The company had raised $600 million last month Alibaba-led investors and Singapore’s state investment firm and now is back with an upraise.
The latest funding of the startup is being carried on in association with some well-known and noteworthy companies – Fidelity International, Hopu Capital, Silver Lake and Tiger Global. SenseTime confirmed that Qualcomm, which formerly sponsored the firm, was also in this round. The new investment brought the amount raised to more than $1.2 billion and tripling its valuation in under a year. SenseTime is at present valued at over $4.5 billion, maintaining its position as one of the most valuable and popular AI start-ups in the world. The AI company became profitable from the last year that is 2017, three years after its establishment and has been flourishing since then with a notable 400% year-by-year growth for the last three consecutive years.
SenseTime is an artificial intelligence company which pays attention to deep learning technologies and innovative computer vision. SenseTime’s AI software also enables cars, robots, and mobile devices to recognize faces. Chinese authorities also use its technology to perform surveillance to identify persons of interest during criminal investigations.
The company with an aim to grow largely has now pooled resources with Alibaba and the Hong Kong Science and Technology Park to create the HK AI Laboratory to transform Hong Kong into an innovation hub. It has also signed agreements with Shanghai Shentong Metro Group for using AI in monitoring metro traffic.
Along with all its innovations, SenseTime has also come up with a textbook to get the upcoming generation of students interested in the technology. The company stated that it plans to evolve AI-oriented courses and lab experiments to promote the technology in schools and educational institutions.
The Chinese company has a good count of prudent partners and customers of more than 700, which also consists if tele-companies like China Mobile, Huawei and Xiaomi. The company has shown a remarkable growth in the matter of patents and customer base and has made itself the indisputable king in the AI industry.