After more than 4 months and stepping on the tail of the old annual calendar, on December 30, 2021, the boots of SenseTime's IPO finally fell to the ground.
Successfully listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange under the code of 00020. HK's SenseTime technology also makes the "AI first stock" really deserved. At the same time, it is hotly discussed, as well as its stock price trend, which not only directly broke the prediction of "listing is broken", but also the highest intraday stock price increase of SenseTime on the first day of listing reached 22.08%, and closed with a 7.27% increase on the same day.
By the last trading day of Hong Kong stocks in 2021, SenseTime technology rose continuously, and closed at HK$5.55 per share with a gain of 33.17%, with a total market value of more than HK$183 billion.
On January 4, 2022, Beijing time, after the opening of Hong Kong stocks, SenseTime once rose by more than 20%.
You know, the Hong Kong stock market has been sluggish for several months, and SenseTime's new stock can successfully break through in the "breaking tide", and has also become the one that "marched high" among a number of technology stocks, such a weather vane not only shows the positive attitude of the capital market to SenseTime, but also brings confidence to the entire AI industry at present, and it is foreseeable that there will be more hard technology companies in the future, listed on the domestic science and technology board A shares or Hong Kong stocks.
"A road rarely taken"
When a boot landed on the ground and was still waiting for a kick in the door, SenseTime technology announced the pricing day by a new round of "blacklist" suppression in the United States.
Under the sudden twists and turns, SenseTime did not retreat in the face of technological hegemony, but proved its technical value in this sanction, attracted more mainland and Hong Kong social capital and private capital, and successfully completed the IPO.
Being able to win this hard battle under political risks is inseparable from the characteristic attributes of SenseTime in the Chinese intelligent industry. Born in Hong Kong, China, grew up in the mainland, and is oriented to global development of super AI unicorns, SenseTime chose to enter the international capital market of Hong Kong, which also invisibly affected the competition for Hong Kong's financial sovereignty and scientific and technological sovereignty.
In fact, for SenseTime, it is not only the twists and turns of the process of sprinting to the listing, the company that was born from the "laboratory" and is now an AI giant has walked "a road that few people have walked".
Xu Li, co-founder, chairman and CEO of SenseTime, looked back at the development path at the "Cloud Bell Ringing" ceremony, "first there is continuous large-scale technology investment to bring innovation, and then there is business model development." Speaking of the difficulty of this road, Xu Li believes that the most important thing is "business uncertainty."
This is the unanimous concern of the outside world about the AI industry, including SenseTime.
However, now SenseTime is reversing the perception of the outside world by its own efforts. From 2018 to 2020, SenseTime achieved revenue of RMB1.85 billion, RMB3.03 billion and RMB3.45 billion respectively, growing steadily year by year, and in the first half of 2021, SenseTime's revenue was RMB1.65 billion, an increase of 91.8% over the same period last year. Net losses are narrowing as revenue increases.
It is worth mentioning that the prospectus shows that 60% of the funds raised in this public offering will be used for research and development.
Technological breakthroughs to empower thousands of industries
"The long-term investment in research and development, the construction of artificial intelligence infrastructure, the layout of the computing power platform and our mission are closely related." Xu Li said in one sentence that SenseTime adheres to the long-term doctrine in the direction of technological innovation.
Tang Xiaoou, a professor in the Department of Information Engineering at the University of Chinese in Hong Kong, founded SenseTime in 2014, which has not only allowed Xu Li and other technical people to work with them, but also attracted and cultivated more artificial intelligence talents.
SenseTime's industry leadership, cutting-edge AI infrastructure, and long-term commitment to the most advanced AI research enable SenseTime to attract and develop top AI talent, with 40 professors and more than 5,000 employees, about two-thirds of which are scientists and engineers, including more than 250 PhD and PhD candidates.
Talent gathering in order to invest in originality can be seen from the technical research and infrastructure achievements achieved by SenseTime. In addition to the intelligent open platform developed by SenseTime for business, city, life, automobiles and other scenarios, its self-developed artificial intelligence infrastructure SenseCore AI device makes the industrial-grade mass production of artificial intelligence models possible.
According to the prospectus, SenseTime's R&D and engineering teams can reduce development time to hours in the whole process of SenseCore's AI-enabled model production, compared to the industry's need for weeks. This is also seen as the foundation for the sustainable development of SenseTime's future business.
It is reported that SenseTime is currently building the Shanghai Lingang Artificial Intelligence Intelligent Computing Center (AIDC), which will be completed in early 2022 and will become one of the largest supercomputing centers in Asia, with a computing power of 374 billion floating-point operations per second.
Not only the deep learning platform and supercomputing center, as a representative of hard technology, SenseTime has also innovated in AI chips and launched an artificial intelligence-specific chip, STPU, which can further accelerate inference operations and reduce deployment costs under the adaptation of SenseTime's artificial intelligence model.
Under the long-term thinking, SenseTime's continuous investment and innovation in the direction of hard science and technology have led China's original innovative technologies to form breakthroughs and establish a moat, "When we see that artificial intelligence has broken through the 'industrial red line' in many industries, we are more convinced of the inclusive value that technological breakthroughs can bring." Xu Li said.
After 7 years of precipitation, SenseTime has grown into a leader in artificial intelligence in Asia, thanks to its technological breakthrough to redefine the scene and model.
As of June 30, 2021, SenseTime's Ark City Open Platform has served 119 cities and connected more than 100 IoT devices.
"Use my 100-point heat to shine a thousand points of light." Xu Li explained at the bell-ringing ceremony that in the process of evolution, SenseTime's AI capabilities will promote artificial intelligence technology to scale, deeply help industrial integration, empower thousands of industries, and reshape all aspects of economic activities such as production, distribution, exchange and consumption, so that everyone can truly feel the inclusive value of AI.
The industry demands a "strong needle"
In China's artificial intelligence track, SenseTime from the academic research and technological innovation gene of the team, to business products and solutions covering the four major sectors of business, city, life and automobile, as the Frost & Sullivan report shows, SenseTime is currently the largest supplier of artificial intelligence software in Asia, with an 11% market share to become China's largest computer vision software provider, coupled with the above mentioned in the infrastructure, large computing power and other R & D investment and R & D efficiency, on the whole, SenseTime's growth is self-evident.
Especially since 2021, SenseTime, which has the attributes of hard technology, and the technology pioneers it represents, have not only created a technical foundation for AI intelligence, but also actively empowered hundreds of industries to achieve digital upgrading. Looking at the entire artificial intelligence industry market, for other AI companies in the future, SenseTime's IPO process is undoubtedly a history textbook.
An artificial intelligence industry observer saw that in addition to Yitu Technology's initiative to withdraw the application for listing on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, Megvii Technology turned to the Science and Technology Innovation Board to sprint IPO, and Yuncong Technology is also working hard to rush to the online market.
SenseTime took the lead in the successful listing, and in the view of the aforementioned industry observers, it has boosted the investment atmosphere in the Hong Kong market to a certain extent. In addition, in the future, hard technology companies, including artificial intelligence companies, will turn Hong Kong stocks, science and technology innovation boards, and the Beijing Stock Exchange into the main battlefield.
In other words, SenseTime's listing in Hong Kong is also a process of continuous education in the market, so that the market recognizes the Chinese hard technology enterprises it represents, not only shouldering the breakthrough of technological innovation, but also highlighting the value in the tide of industry and finance development, and more in line with the current strategic direction of the country.
Even after the resumption of the prospectus after the unexpected situation, the cornerstone investment scale attracted by SenseTime was directly increased to US$510 million earlier, and the investor lineup should not be underestimated, the 9 cornerstone investors are China Chengtong's Mixed Ownership Reform Fund, Xuhui Capital, Guosheng Group, Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund, SAIC, Guotai Junan, Hong Kong Science and Technology Park, Sima Ophthalmology, taizhou Cultural Tourism.
The pressure support of investors fully shows that SenseTime, which has been deeply cultivating technology for many years and gathering many technical talents, has been given higher value by the current era and industrial development.
Compared with the previous wave of Internet companies in the past 10 to 20 years, 2021 seems to be a watershed, and under the watershed is another critical period for hard technology and new productivity. At this stage, the integration trend of digital technology and the real economy will be more significant.
As a company aimed at hard technology and focusing on original technology and AI infrastructure, SenseTime is not only a high-quality listing project needed for the changing capital market, but also plays a pivotal role in enhancing the country's competitive power in science and technology.
With SenseTime as the representative of AI enterprises, what to be solved is a problem that is really related to the hard scientific and technological strength of the country's development in the next 5 or 10 years, that is, another key issue of "card neck".
Under this long-term goal, the IPO is only the first step for SenseTime to contact the market, and under its solid platform-based play, there are more possibilities worth envisioning in the future. In his listing speech, Xu Li expressed his confidence in the entire artificial intelligence industry from time to time. "Today, artificial intelligence has become the infrastructure of the times as a general technology." He stressed that with the help of AI computing power large devices and big data technology breakthroughs, artificial intelligence is accelerating the expansion of human cognitive boundaries for the vast world.
Text/Money Side