China's SenseTime, the world's highest valued AI startup, raises $1.2 billion in mere months

World's highest-valued AI company, SenseTime Group ltd., with a valuation of over $4.5 billion, is back in the money again. The company raised $600 million in an Alibaba led financing round announced last month, and now it has added a further $620 million to that with a "Series C+" round announced today.

The previous deal was led by Alibaba, and this time it includes more investment giants like Fidelity International, Hopu Capital, Silver Lake and Tiger Global. The previous investor Qualcomm was also in the round, Sensetime confirmed. this brings the total amount raised by the three-year-old image recognition startup in the past six months to more than $1.2 billion and tripling its valuation in under a year. As per SenseTime, the latest funding will go toward research and talent acquisition.

Involvement

SenseTime specializes in systems that analyze faces and images on an enormous scale and works with policing bodies across China. 400% growth has been noted in each of the past three years, as per the startup. According to its statement, business contract revenue is up more than 10 times so far this year.
The company is a big contributor to the world's biggest system of surveillance, if you have ever been photographed with a Chinese phone or went to China, chances are your face has been digitally crunched by SenseTime software built into more than 100 million mobile devices.

Future

Chinese artificial intelligence startups are getting billions of dollars from investors, hoping a support from the government on becoming the world leader on the technology by 2030.But the growing hype is encouraging everything from video services to language schools to claim AI as integral to their business to win funding. Some investors warn the sector could experience a downturn towards the end of this year if those companies fail to deliver revenue growth.

In recent months, the company said it signed agreements with China's largest subway operator, Shanghai Shentong Metro Group, to use AI to monitor metro traffic, and with the city of Chengdu to create a regional headquarter. The firm also teamed up with Alibaba and the Hong Kong Science and Technology Park to create the HK AI Laboratory to transform Hong Kong into an innovation hub.
Since finding sufficient talent is a common problem for many AI firms, SenseTime has also created a textbook to get the next generation of Chinese students interested in the technology. The company said it plans to develop AI-driven courses and lab experiments to promote the technology in schools.