Meet SenseTime, Hong Kong’s first hi-tech unicorn that no one’s heard of

The artificial intelligence venture has seen strong demand from mainland Chinese companies since its launch in 2014

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Xu Li, co-founder and chief executive of SenseTime Group says he and his fellow founders were surprised at the company’s explosive growth. Photo: Handout

Published: 7:15am, 23 Oct 2017Updated: 11:07am, 25 Nov 2019

After years in the trenches doing research in artificial intelligence, Xu Li says his aha moment came in 2014 when he saw a strong case to create a business with a group of long-standing academic colleagues from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK).

They formed SenseTime Group at the Hong Kong Science Park that same year, quickly turning it into the world’s hottest AI company and the city’s first hi-tech “unicorn” — a start-up valued at U$1 billion or more — a month ahead of GoGoVan.

“As academics, we knew the powerful tool that we had developed,” company chief executive Xu told the South China Morning Post. “When combined with huge volumes of data, our deep learning algorithm helps us establish applications which can surpass human performance, such as in facial recognition.”

Deep learning, a subset of a broader family of so-called machine learning technologies, is concerned with algorithms that teach computers to learn by example and perform tasks based on classifying various data, including images, sound and text.

Xu, 35, says he was taken back by the pace of the company’s growth since launch.

“We expected to have an impact in the industry, but we never imagined how fast we would take off,” said Xu.

SenseTime now has more than 400 customers and strategic partners, including China Mobile, HNA Group, Wanda Group, Meitu, graphics processor maker Nvidia, China UnionPay, JD Finance, Sina Weibo, China Merchants Bank, and mainland smartphone giants Huawei Technologies, Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi.