China’s largest artificial intelligence company SenseTime priced its initial public offering at HK$3.85 (49 cents) per share, raising $5.55 billion.
Tang, 53, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate and information engineering professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, holds a 21% stake in the company and is worth $3.4 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
He worked for Microsoft Research Asia for a few years and co-founded Shanghai-based SenseTime in 2014 with Xu Li, then a research scientist at Chinese computer maker Lenovo Group Ltd. The company attracted early investment from IDG Capital and then picked up backers including SoftBank Group Corp., Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Silver Lake.
It’s now the largest AI software firm in Asia with an 11% market share, according to the prospectus. The technology is deployed in a range of areas, including helping police in China, providing product placements in films and creating an augmented reality scene in a mobile game by Tencent Holdings Ltd.
SenseTime’s revenue increased 14% last year to $3.4 billion yuan ($534 million), though it still posted an operating loss of 1.8 billion yuan.
“Tech companies at an early stage still need to invest more in research and development to keep their technology competitive,” Ng said. “For SenseTime, maintaining a stable income growth is more important than turning profitable in the short-term.”