Who is the world's most valuable AI startup company? You might say DeepMind, after all, the AI ​​technology it developed defeated the world's Go masters. No, at the moment, the world's most valuable AI company is from China. It is called SenseTime.
On Monday, SenseTime completed a new round of financing and invested 600 million U.S. dollars. According to calculations, SenseTime's valuation has exceeded 3 billion US dollars. In other words, it has become the most valuable AI startup company in the world.
Who is SenseTime? Maybe many people don't know, we need to know. SenseTime develops professional software that recognizes faces from surveillance videos. CBInsights has compiled a list and ranks startups by valuation. The second largest AI startup company is also a Chinese company. It is Shanghai Yitu Technology, with a valuation of approximately US$2.4 billion.
Supporters behind the scenes are very strong
Who has paid for SenseTime? In addition to Alibaba, Qualcomm also invested in SenseTime last year. SenseTimeCEO Xu Li said that after the completion of the financing, the company will strive to expand its business coverage and expand AI technology to more industries. For example, SenseTime technology may infiltrate into the areas of security, mobile phone, advertising, and automatic driving.
In fact, some mobile phone vendors have already introduced SenseTime technology. For example, Xiaomi, Vivo and Oppo use SenseTime technology to manage albums, and also use their face scanning technology to unlock mobile phones. Why is Alibaba investing? Alibaba acknowledges that it is researching and seeing if it can introduce SenseTime technology into its own business. One place may be useful, if Alibaba wants to open a cashless grocery store chain, SenseTime technology can come in handy.
Suning is also an investor in SenseTime and wants to use SenseTime technology to build stores that do not require cashiers. Alibaba and Suning’s plans are similar to Amazon’s Go. When a user walks into an Amazon store and picks things up directly and then leaves, AI software automatically determines what the user bought and sends an electronic bill.
SenseTime said that so far more than 400 partners and customers have used their own AI technology. Honda is also a partner of SenseTime and they work together on driverless cars. SenseTime also collaborated with MIT to study computer vision technology, develop algorithms like human intelligence, and focus on medical imaging and robotics research.
In just a few months valuation doubled
DeepMind in London can be said to be competitors of SenseTime. In 2014, Google invested 565 million US dollars to buy DeepMind. What is the total valuation of SenseTime in the end? The company did not give specific figures, it just said that he is the world's most valuable AI platform, the amount of this financing also refreshed AI's single financing record.
Last July, SenseTime raised $410 million, which was valued at about $1.5 billion at the time, led by CDH Investments and Sailing Capital. The financing boosted SenseTime’s valuation to more than US$3 billion. SenseTime did not disclose the specific information of investors, but there is news that Alibaba has the largest stake.
In just a few months, SenseTime's valuation has at least doubled. Informed sources said that SenseTime is ready to continue to complete a new round of financing, this time the target valuation of more than 45 billion US dollars.
SenseTimeCEO Xu Li said in an interview: “We are moving in several new strategic directions and we need to raise a lot of money to build infrastructure.†2017 SenseTime has turned a profit, and by the end of this year, the company is ready to employ a number of employees One-third increase to 2,000 people. Xu Li also said: "In the past three years, our average revenue growth rate has remained at 400 percent." Do not forget, SenseTime is a new company established only 3 years.
According to the plan, in the coming year, SenseTime plans to install at least five supercomputers in China's first-tier cities to support Viper and other services. The SenseTime service collects live feeds, enters a system, automatically processes it, and automatically marks it. This information comes from office face scanners, ATMs, and traffic cameras. SenseTime has a big goal: to allow the system to process 100,000 messages simultaneously.
What are its competitors?
Does SenseTime's service infringe user privacy? Xu Li said: “It will not infringe privacy because only authorized people can access the system.†Qualcomm, Nvidia and Xiaomi are all partners of SenseTime, according to Xu Li’s introduction. In 2018, the company hopes to achieve revenue of 1 billion yuan.
Breyer Capital's founder Jim Breyer, who invests in SenseTime through IDG, said: “Because of restrictions on privacy in some regions of the United States and the European Union, there are certain advantages in certain fields of technology, such as facial recognition. I have seen facial recognition technology Some of the best technologies come from China."
According to CBInsights' statistics, SenseTime is the largest private AI company. There are also several companies that are relatively large in size, such as Contempt Technology, which also develops facial recognition technology. It raised 460 million U.S. dollars last year. In accordance with plans and the code Long technology also financing success. In addition, there is also a company worthy of attention, it is Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co., Ltd., Hikvision is one of the world's largest security camera provider, the company itself is also developing AI technology.
How to compete with competitors? Xu Li said that their technology can span a wide range of data sets and a variety of products that competitors can't do. Xu Li said: "If video streams have different formats, you have to complete the processing, which is a very difficult task." SenseTime already wanted to go public, but Xu Li said that China is ready to support technology companies in the domestic market, but the new The regulations have not yet been determined and the company is waiting. He said: "We are waiting for the final rules to come out and then formulate new strategies. This year may not be."
Solar home energy storage power supply
SHENZHEN CHONDEKUAI TECHNOLOGY CO.LTD , https://www.szsiheyi.com