Just weeks after the U.S. positioned a unit of SenseTime Group Inc. on a blacklist for alleged human rights violations, the firm is about to make founder Tang Xiao’ou one of the world’s richest people.
China’s largest artificial intelligence company evaluated its initial public offering at HK$3.85 (49 cents) per share, raising $5.55 billion.
That was the bottom of the expected range, but a signal that despite amplified tensions with the U.S. and Beijing’s crackdown on tech giants, the country, including its vast surveillance machinery, continues to churn out huge fortunes and massive gains for venture capitalists.
Tang, 53, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate and information engineering professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, holds a 21% stake in the company and is worth $3.4 billion, rendering to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
A representative for SenseTime declined to comment on Tang’s net worth.
SenseTime was long predictable to be a blockbuster public offering but has drawn fire in
recent years.
It was involuntary to delay the listing this month after the U.S. alleged the company’s facial recognition software is used in the oppression of Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang autonomous region of western China. SenseTime has said the accusations, which led to the sanctions, are unfounded.
SenseTime is the first overseas offering by a high-profile Chinese tech unicorn since ride-sharing giant Didi Global Inc.’s July IPO in New York sparked a regulatory backlash by officials in Beijing. The shares are arranged to start trading Dec. 30 in Hong Kong, giving the company a market value of more than $16 billion.
Tang has long been involved in developing the artificial intelligence required for facial recognition.
He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Science and Technology of China, then graduated from the University of Rochester in New York and got his PhD from MIT in 1996, where he studied underwater robotics and computer vision.
He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Science and Technology of China, then graduated from the University of Rochester in New York and got his PhD from MIT in 1996, where he studied underwater robotics and computer vision.
He worked for Microsoft Research Asia for a few years and co-founded Shanghai-based SenseTime in 2014 with Xu Li, then a research scientist at Chinese computer maker Lenovo Group Ltd. The company attracted early investment from IDG Capital and then picked up backers including SoftBank Group Corp., Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Silver Lake.
It’s now the largest AI software firm in Asia with an 11% market share, according to the prospectus. The technology is deployed in a range of areas, including helping police in China, providing product placements in films and producing an augmented reality scene in a mobile game by Tencent Holdings Ltd.