Innovation & Impact

INNOVATIONS

SenseTime: A CUHK-Bred AI Unicorn That Propels an Innovative Future for Hong Kong and Beyond

Entrepreneurship

Innovations & Impacts

In developing Hong Kong as the international hub of innovation and technology (I&T), artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the key focused technology areas. Its wide application spans across different sectors and areas from healthcare, manufacturing, traffic management to every aspect of our daily lives. In response to the city’s agenda that reverberates with the rapid development of AI in China, CUHK has been devoted to strengthening its leading role in nurturing I&T talents and companies.



Professor Sean Xiaoou TANG, Outstanding Fellow of the Faculty of Engineering and Professor of the Department of Information Engineering, started up SenseTime in Hong Kong in 2014. The AI company focuses on the development and advancement of computer vision, pattern recognition and video processing, derived from Professor TANG and his team’s research on building a novel facial recognition system. Their novel technology achieved the world’s highest accuracy of 99.15% which surpassed the accuracy of human eyes, illuminating its potential for advancing different sectors such as security, law enforcement, internet and entertainment. Considered as one of the AI unicorns in the world, the company currently provides products and services in four major areas, namely, Smart Business (SenseFoundry Enterprise), Smart City (SenseFoundry), Smart Life (SenseME, SenseMARS, SenseCare and Education) and Smart Auto (SenseAuto).


From Research to Market

  • RESEARCH

  • ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Professor TANG’s research interests include computer vision, pattern recognition, and video processing. In 2001, Professor Xiaoou Tang established the Multimedia Laboratory (MMLab), one of the pioneering institutes on deep learning. The research group is one of the most active research labs in computer vision and deep learning, publishing over 40 papers on top conferences (CVPR/ICCV/ECCV/NIPS) every year. In 2021, SenseTime partnered with CUHK, Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University to unveil a new generation of general vision model “INTERN,” addressing the key obstacles to the development of general vision in AI, including generalisation and data efficiency.

In 2014, Professor TANG and his team founded SenseTime with its global headquarter established in Hong Kong. The AI company was later named in iHeima’s 2016 Top 50 AI Start-ups. In 2018, SenseTime was valued over US$4.5 billion after raising US$620 million in Series C+ funding, maintaining its position as the world’s largest and most valuable AI unicorn. The unicorn set up established its China headquarter in Shanghai in 2019. And in 2021, SenseTime successfully listed on the Main Board of the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong (HKEX). Currently, SenseTime has offices in regions across the globe like Hong Kong, Mainland China, Macau, Taiwan, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates, among others, as well as a presence in Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

Over the years, the AI uncorn has forged partnership and collaboration with various government agencies, companies, universities and institutions from all around the world, such as Beijing Daxing International Airport, Shanghai AI Lab, Tsinghua University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, East China Normal University Press, Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO), Saudi Company for Artificial Intelligence (SCAI), Vivo, Honda, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU, Singapore), National Supercomputing Centre of Singapore (NSCC), Singapore Telecommunications Limited (Singtel), G3 Global, CHEC, ORLEN, GAC Group, King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD), and so on.

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