Chinese AI company 'SenseTime' to IPO in Hong Kong on the 30th... Billionaire emergence anticipated

Corporate Value of 19 Trillion Won
Founder Sits on a Fortune of 4 Trillion Won

▲Tang Xiaoou, Founder of SenseTime

[Asia Economy Reporter Kwon Jaehee] SenseTime, a Chinese IT company blacklisted by the U.S. for human rights violations, will debut on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on the 30th. This is expected to create another billionaire.

According to Bloomberg on the 29th (local time), SenseTime, China's largest artificial intelligence (AI) company, has set its public offering price at HKD 3.85 per share, aiming to raise a total of HKD 5.55 billion (approximately KRW 844.2 billion). Trading will begin on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on the 30th, and SenseTime's market value is expected to exceed USD 16 billion (approximately KRW 19 trillion).

With SenseTime's IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, attention is also focused on one of its founders, Tang Xiao’ou (53). Tang is the largest shareholder, holding 21% of SenseTime's shares. His net worth is expected to reach about USD 3.4 billion (approximately KRW 4 trillion) following the listing.

Tang Xiao’ou earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Science and Technology of China, attended the University of Rochester in New York, and obtained his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1996. Currently a professor of information engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Professor Tang is an authority in underwater robotics and computer vision and has long been dedicated to developing AI necessary for facial recognition.

Professor Tang worked for several years at Microsoft (MS) Research Asia and co-founded SenseTime in Shanghai in 2014 with Xu Li, who was then a researcher at Lenovo Group, a Chinese computer manufacturer.

SenseTime has received investments from Alibaba, SoftBank, and others. According to its prospectus, SenseTime currently holds an 11% market share and is the largest AI software company in Asia.

Bloomberg interpreted the high interest in SenseTime's IPO as a sign that despite U.S.-China tensions and the Chinese government's crackdown on tech companies, such technologies are generating enormous wealth and substantial profits for venture investors and the state.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.