Chinese AI firm SenseTime heads for £580m listing despite US investor ban
Chinese artificial intelligence start-up SenseTime Group announced today that it has relaunched its $767m (£580m) Hong Kong share sale after its listing was pulled last week following an American ban on investment.
US officials accused SenseTime of developing facial recognition software to determine people’s ethnicity, with a focus on identifying ethnic Uyghurs, according to BBC reports.
The company was set to start trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on 30 December, however the listing was postponed after the US Treasury Department placed SenseTime on a list of “Chinese military-industrial complex companies”.
Today, SenseTime stated: “Our group’s products and services are intended for civilian and commercial uses and not for any military application.”
Whilst the US ban does not completely stop the company from listing, it does limit the ability to raise funds by the start-up.
The news comes as tensions between the US and Chinese tech continue to bubble away.