Weeks after the US placed the SenseTime IPO on a blacklist for human rights violations, Tang Xiao’ou is going to be one of the richest people on Earth.
Professor makes fortune from SenseTime IPO
The SenseTime IPO placed at around 49 cents per share, raising a total of almost $3.4 billion. However, this is the bottom range for the initial offering of China’s largest artificial intelligence firm. Despite the increasing tensions between the US and Beijing tech giants, venture capitalists are still making fortunes. Tang Xiao’ou is a 53-year old Professor of Information Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Tang holds a 21 percent stake in the firm. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Tang’s shares are worth about $3.4 billion. Before co-founding SenseTime, he worked for Microsoft Research Asia.
SenseTime IPO is a blockbuster initial public offering (IPO). The firm is the first overseas offering since ride-share Didi Global Inc’s IPO in July. However, in recent years, the firm is drawing fire. The listing faced a delay since the US alleged that the firm’s facial recognition technology was used for oppressing Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, China. However, according to SenseTime, the accusations are baseless.
More about the AI firm and its IPO
SenseTime is the largest AI software firm in Asia with about 11 percent market share. Their technology has several applications and is also helping Chinese police, product placement, and creating augmented reality scenes for games. The firm relaunched its IPO after the blacklist and the increase of investor bets from $450 million to $512 million. The firm is backed by several sponsors including Shanghai Xuhui Capital Investment Co., Haitong International Securities Group Ltd., HSBC Holdings PIc, etc.
Later SenseTime uploaded a legal opinion to Hong Kong Stock Exchange, stating that the restrictions did not apply to SenseTime IPO. “It makes sense that retail investors who look for short-term gains have become less enthusiastic with the sanction factor. Especially since the overall Hong Kong stock market is not performing well lately,” said Kenny Ng. Ng is a strategist from Everbright Sun Hung Kai. “Tech companies at an early stage still need to invest more in research and development to keep their technology competitive. For SenseTime, maintaining a stable income growth is more important than turning profitable in the short-term,” he added.