SenseTime Group reportedly eyeing $2 billion Hong Kong IPO

The artificial intelligence company has already completed 10 rounds of financing from 2014 to 2018, with a total financing amount of nearly $4 billion, according to data from TianYanCha.com

Artificial intelligence (AI) company SenseTime Group Ltd. is reportedly cooperating with HSBC Holdings Plc to arrange an initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong to raise at least $2 billion, people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday. SenseTime and HSBC both have not issued any response yet.

As early as 2017, Tang Xiao’ou, founder of SenseTime, said that the company is considering listing in the United States, Hong Kong or the Chinese Mainland.

SenseTime has already completed 10 rounds of financing from 2014 to 2018, with a total financing amount of nearly $4 billion, according to data from TianYanCha.com.

Tencent News reported at the end of January this year that SenseTime completed the Pre-IPO round of fundraising at the end of 2020. The investors were mainly Chinese-funded institutions, which included some state-owned venture capital firms, and SenseTime’s post-investment valuation at the time was nearly $12 billion.

A Financing Plan of SenseTime, one of the company’s publicly available documents, showed that the firm’s revenue was 5.06 billion yuan ($78.05 million) in 2019 with a gross profit margin of 43%. Its gross profit was 2.16 billion yuan ($0.33 billion); In 2017 and 2018, the net interest rate of SenseTime was 2% and 3% respectively, and the net profit was 11 million yuan ($1.70 million) and 59 million yuan ($9.10 million) respectively.

SenseTime Group Ltd. was established in 2014, and focuses on the research and development of original technologies for computer vision and deep learning. The company has already independently developed and established a deep learning and supercomputing platform with a series of artificial intelligence technologies.