Alibaba Leads $600 Million Investment in AI Startup SenseTime
Chinese artificial intelligence startup SenseTime raises $600 million in a Series C round led by Alibaba, pushing its valuation past $3 billion. The company plans to use the funds to expand into autonomous driving and build massive supercomputers for its facial recognition systems.
Alibaba leads a $600 million Series C investment round in SenseTime, pushing the Chinese artificial intelligence startup to a valuation of over $3 billion and making it the most valuable AI startup in the world. Singaporean state investment firm Temasek Holdings and retailer Suning.com also participate in the funding round. Alibaba reportedly seeks the largest stake in the three-year-old company, which specializes in large-scale facial recognition and image analysis.
The massive influx of capital doubles SenseTime's valuation in just a few months and solidifies its role in Beijing's push to become the global leader in artificial intelligence by 2030. The company's software is already deeply integrated into everyday life in China, processing facial data from over 100 million mobile devices and powering a vast network of street-level surveillance cameras. SenseTurns a profit in 2017 and currently experiences an average annual revenue growth of 400 percent.
SenseTime uses the new funding to expand into parallel technologies like autonomous driving and augmented reality, while also aggressively hiring to grow its workforce to 2,000 employees. The startup builds at least five supercomputers over the next year to support a new platform code-named "Viper," which analyzes thousands of live camera feeds simultaneously. The company is already in discussions to raise another funding round with a target valuation exceeding $4.5 billion.