SenseTime, the China-based artificial intelligence software producer backed by corporate investors Alibaba, Qualcomm, SoftBank, Suning and Dalian Wanda, has received an undisclosed amount from unnamed investors at a $12bn valuation, Tencent News reported yesterday.
The funding was raised in late 2020 and is intended to precede the launch of an initial public offering. It follows reports in July 2020 that the company was in the process of raising roughly $1.5bn at a valuation of about $10bn.
SenseTime’s AI software is used to identify objects, faces and vehicles and is used in surveillance in addition to areas like autonomous driving, medical imaging analysis and robotics sensing and control.
The company had previously received a reported $2.6bn in funding since it was founded in 2014, including $1bn from telecommunications and internet conglomerate SoftBank in a deal originally reported in July 2018 that reportedly closed two months later.
Qualcomm Ventures, a subsidiary of mobile chipmaker Qualcomm, had joined investment and financial services group Fidelity, Hopu Capital, Silver Lake and Tiger Global Management to provide $620m in a May 2018 series C-plus round valuing the company at $4.5bn.
The valuation was flat from SenseTime’s $600m series C round, which was led by e-commerce group Alibaba and backed by appliance retailer Suning and Singaporean state-owned investment firm Temasek, the previous month.
The company closed a series B round that included real estate conglomerate Dalian Wanda at $410m in 2017 at a $1.5bn valuation.
CDH Investments, IDG Capital, StarVC, Sailing Capital International, China International Capital, Co-Stone Capital, China Merchants Securities International, 5Y Capital, Everbright-IDG Industrial Fund, Advantech Capital, Zhongping Guoyu Asset Management, Huarong International Financial Holdings, TCL Capital and Infore Group also backed the 2017 round.
