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Shang Tang is coming!
On August 28, super AI unicorn SenseTime submitted a prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and officially sprinted for IPO listing.
What's different about SenseTime?
In the prospectus, SenseTime is the number one company in Asia by revenue in the AI industry. Among them, there are more than 2,400 software platform customers, technology landing in 119 cities, 30+ car companies, as well as 450 million mobile phones and 200+ Apps.
SenseTime also launched the SELF-development of THE AI chip STPU in 2018, and began to successfully tape and mass-produce in 2020.
In terms of key financial data, in 2018, 2019, 2020 and the first half of 2021, the revenue was 1.85 billion yuan, 3.03 billion yuan, 3.45 billion yuan and 1.652 billion yuan, respectively, and the commercial revenue has entered the stage of large-scale growth, with a year-on-year increase of 91.87% in the latest half year.
In terms of profit, the corresponding net loss was 220 million yuan, 1.037 billion yuan, 878 million yuan and 726 million yuan respectively, which is narrowing year-on-year.
The most directly related reason for the profitability is R&D investment, corresponding to the reporting period, SenseTime's R&D expenditure was 849 million yuan, 1.92 billion yuan, 2.45 billion yuan and 1.77 billion yuan, respectively, with more than half of the revenue invested in research and development every year.
The prospectus also disclosed that SenseTime has completed a total of 12 rounds of financing, with a total financing amount of US$5.2 billion (about 33.658 billion yuan).
Among them, the largest shareholder is still the founder Professor Tang Xiaoou, holding 21.73%; the CEO Xu Li holds 0.9% of the shares, the chief scientist Wang Xiaogang holds 0.73%, the head of war investment Xu Bing holds 0.33%, and SenseTalent (Class B shares held by Xu Li, Wang Xiaogang and Xu Bing) holds 12.17%.
Among the external shareholders, SoftBank holds 14.88%, Ali holds 7.59% of Taobao China, Primavera Capital holds 3.08%, Silver Lake Capital holds 3.05% of the shares, and IDG Capital holds 1.42%.
SenseTime will be listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange using the AB share mechanism, with different rights for the same shares, 10 voting rights for A shares, and the founding team will still firmly control the company.
In addition, SenseTime has now invested in 22 companies, covering a variety of fields.
Why is SenseTime different?
Founded by AI Big Cow Tang Xiaoou, SenseTime has included 40 professors, more than 250 doctoral and doctoral students, and a technology research and development team composed of 3593 scientists and engineers, accounting for more than 2/3 of the company's total staff, and last year's research and development salary alone exceeded 1.5 billion.
Since its inception in 2014, it has won more than 70 global champions, more than 600 top academic papers, more than 8,000 AI invention patents, and ranked first in the world in the total number of papers published at the world's three major computer vision conferences.
SenseTime also said it has the world's largest computer vision model with more than 30 billion parameters. It is also building a top supercomputing center in Asia, and together with the AL AI infrastructure SenseCore (large device), it can further accelerate larger-scale commercialization.
Finally, 60% of the funds raised by SenseTime in this IPO will also be invested in research and development. Although the amount of financing has not yet been disclosed, it will undoubtedly be one of the largest public offerings in the FIELD of AI.
The following is a detailed explanation of the complete prospectus of each dimension of SenseTime.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="21" > SenseTime's key financial data? </h1>
During the reporting period from 2018 to 2020, SenseTime's revenue was RMB1,853.4 million, RMB3,026.6 million and RMB3,446.2 million, respectively.
Revenue in the first half of 2020 and the first half of 2021, respectively: 861.2 million yuan and 1.6518 billion yuan, an increase of 91.87% year-on-year
SenseTime's adjusted net losses for 2018, 2019, 2020 and the first half of 2021 were $220.5 million, $1,037.1 million, $878.4 million and $726.2 million, respectively.
The good thing is that the net loss is narrowing in the face of increasing revenue.
In addition, the revenue growth rate in 2019 and 2020 was 63.3% and 13.9%, respectively.
SenseTime said that the revenue growth rate in 2020 was greatly affected by the epidemic, of which the company's revenue accounted for only 25% of the whole year during the epidemic in the first half of the year, and the prospectus also proposed the impact of the new crown epidemic on the business in the risk item.
So, which business of SenseTime has been most affected by the epidemic?
It depends on the composition of SenseTime's business.
SenseTime divides its business into four major segments: Smart Business, Smart City, Smart Life, and Smart Cars. The absolute amount of revenue in these four sectors is as follows:
The contribution to revenue is as follows:
The Smart City business generated revenue of 28.6%, 41.9%, 39.7% and 47.6% in 2018, 2019 and 2020 and the first half of 2021, respectively.
SenseTime also said in its prospectus that much of its business relies on sales to the public sector.
In this business, SenseTime quoted a third-party report, saying that the market share is the first in the industry.
Government policies related to AI-related products and services, as well as uncertainties and changes in government spending, may have a negative impact on the business, financial condition and results of operations.
Due to the quarantine measures under the epidemic in the first half of 2020, the construction of smart city projects in various places has slowed down, which has greatly affected the company's revenue. Although the epidemic has led to a decline in the overall business, the smart city business has been particularly affected.
A large concentration of customers is another risk factor.
In 2018, 2019, 2020 and the first half of 2021, SenseTime's largest customers accounted for 8.7%, 7.7%, 11.9% and 22.9% of revenue, respectively, and the top five customers accounted for 28.4%, 26.3%, 31.4% and 59.3% of revenue, respectively.
According to the prospectus of the "AI Four Little Dragons", the gross profit margin of Cloud Cong technology in the first half of 2020 was 53.45%, Megvii Technology was 64.6% in the first half of 2019, and 63.9% in 2019. SenseTime's gross profit margin is now at a high level in the industry.
In terms of overseas markets, from 2018 to 2020 and the first half of 2021, SenseTime's revenue from markets outside Chinese mainland was RMB319.7 million, RMB475.2 million, RMB762.1 million and RMB238.8 million, respectively.
As an AI technology company, R&D investment is also quite prominent in SenseTime's financial indicators.
For the reporting period, SenseTime's R&D expenditure was $849 million, $1.92 billion, $2.45 billion and $1.77 billion, respectively.
It is worth noting that the proportion of SenseTime R&D in revenue has increased year by year, even exceeding the company's revenue in the first half of this year, the growth rate far exceeds revenue, and the importance of R&D is evident.
In the specific research and development investment, employee salaries account for the majority.
In 2018, the salary and welfare of R&D personnel was 512.7 million yuan, and in the first half of this year, in only half a year, the expenditure reached 1.2853 billion yuan, accounting for 72.5% of the company's R&D investment, and 77.8% of revenue.
AI talent is still very expensive.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="47" > the main business composition of SenseTime? </h1>
At present, there are four major businesses that bring revenue to SenseTime.
They are smart business, smart city, smart life, and smart cars.
In the past 3 years, the revenue of each business is as follows:
To achieve such revenue, what does SenseTime rely on?
Details of the four business segments are as follows:
First of all, in the smart business segment, SenseTime mainly launched the Enterprise Ark platform.
It is a software platform that enables enterprise customers to digitally transform, enabling them to deploy in a code-free, scalable, flexible, and scalable manner.
The platform embeds more than 9,300 artificial intelligence models, which have the characteristics of perception intelligence, decision-making intelligence, and high adaptability to IoT devices.
It has been widely used in many vertical industries, including commercial space management, residential property management, manufacturing, infrastructure, transportation, and financial services.
As of the first half of this year, SenseTime said it had deployed Enterprise Ark at nearly 6,000 customer sites and had connected more than 2.5 million IoT devices.
In the smart city segment, SenseTime launched the corresponding Urban Ark platform.
In line with the enterprise ark, the city ark is a one-stop smart city management platform built to meet the needs of city managers.
It has more than 14,000 AI models that can be seamlessly embedded into existing city management systems, combining the operating interface with a real-world 3D city model.
It supports smart city management in all aspects of mobility and traffic management, urban services, environmental protection, emergency response, and more. At present, it has been applied in many large cities at home and abroad.
In terms of smart life, SenseTime said that products are becoming an indispensable part of building the Internet of Things and metacosm.
The SenseME platform can support a wide range of IoT devices with low requirements for space, cost, bandwidth, and power consumption.
It consists of more than 3500 AI models, including a full suite of devices such as SDKs, AI sensors, and ISP chips.
SenseME has obvious advantages in perceptual intelligence (such as object detection) and visual content enhancement.
For example, in the processing of low-light images and background bokeh, the performance is very good.
At present, SenseME is already providing visual optimization, smart photo albums and other services for some mobile phone manufacturers.
The SenseMARS platform can empower the metaverse, which mainly includes the following three elements:
SenseMARS Reconstruction enables digital reproduction of the physical world through 3D reconstruction technology.
SenseMARS Avatar can create avatars for people and provide an interface to enter the virtual world.
SenseMARS Agents can generate software agents that interact with people in the digital world.
As of June 30 this year, SenseMARS offers more than 3500 AI models in total, and here's how it works:
The specific digital reconstruction and MR effect are as follows:
At present, SenseMARS has copied the collections in the Forbidden City online, presented in the form of an AR calendar.
The virtual experience space in the BilibiliWorld 2021 large-scale offline carnival is also created from this.
In addition, SenseTime is also working on building a "three-body" line sinking immersion experience hall.
At the same time, SenseTime's smart life business also focuses on the medical field.
They built SenseCare, a smart healthcare ARTIFICIAL intelligence platform that uses AI tools to assist doctors in diagnosis, treatment planning and rehabilitation recommendations, and supports abnormal detection, identification, and automatic diagnostic analysis of multiple organs.
Finally, the last big piece of the puzzle of SenseTime's business landscape is smart cars.
They have created a senseAuto platform dedicated to smart cars, which consists of 5 parts to provide full-stack artificial intelligence car services.
These include advanced driver assistance systems, driver analysis systems, etc., and have launched related products that can be applied to urban bus scenarios.
The above business can be landed, relying on the research and development results of Various Technologies of SenseTime.
At its core is senseCore, a general artificial intelligence infrastructure.
SenseCore integrates cutting-edge technologies in four aspects: AI algorithms, AI systems, AI chips and AI sensors.
It can train state-of-the-art super-large AI models and deploy models in different scenarios at low cost, thus achieving centralized mass production of AI models.
In addition, SenseTime has 23 supercomputing clusters and has developed STPU for computing centers, as well as ISP chips.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="87" > SenseTime's entrepreneurial road? </h1>
Since its inception, SenseTime has demonstrated its distinctive technological originality.
In 2014, Professor Tang Xiaoou, who taught in the Department of Information Engineering at the University of Chinese in Hong Kong, transformed his research results and established SenseTime.
Professor Tang Xiaoou, 53, graduated from the University of Science and Technology of China with a bachelor's degree, and received a master's degree and a doctorate from the University of Rochester.
He founded the Multimedia Lab at Chinese University in Hong Kong, and in 2016, together with MIT, Stanford and other famous universities, he was selected as one of the world's top ten artificial intelligence pioneer laboratories.
Co-founders Xu Li, Yang Fan and others are students from this laboratory.
From 2005 to 2008, Professor Tang also served as the director of the Visual Computing Group at Microsoft Research, and in 2009 won the best paper in CVPR, which was also the first paper in Asia.
He is also a member of the editorial board of IEEE PAMI, the journal with the highest impact factor, and the first Chinese editor-in-chief of IJCV, which has the highest impact factor in the entire field of computer science.
Co-founder Dr. Xu Li, a 39-year-old from the Multimedia Lab team from the University of Chinese, Hong Kong.
He graduated from Shanghai Jiao Tong University with a master's degree and from the University of Chinese, Hong Kong.
Prior to joining SenseTime, Dr. Xu visited or worked for a number of top computer vision basic research institutes.
Such as Motorola Research Institute, Omron Research Institute, Microsoft Research, Lenovo Research and other companies.
In addition, Dr. Xu Li has published more than 40 papers in top international conferences and journals in the field of vision.
Dr. Xiaogang Wang, co-founder and executive director and chief scientist, was 44 years old. He holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Science and Technology of China, and obtained a master's degree and a doctorate degree from the University of Chinese in Hong Kong.
He is currently the Dean of SenseTime and an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Chinese, Hong Kong.
In Google Scholar, Dr. Wang Xiaogang's papers have been cited more than 65,000 times, and the H factor is as high as 120.
Co-founder Dr. Bing Xu, aged 31, holds a double bachelor's degree in information engineering and mathematics from the University of Chinese in Hong Kong, where he is responsible for senseTime's corporate development, financing and strategic investment management.
Co-founder and vice president Yang Fan, aged 38, graduated from Tsinghua University with a major in electrical engineering. He has 8 years of experience in Microsoft, and has 13 PCT inventions, 2 domestic invention patents and 2 utility model patents.
Chief Financial Officer Wang Zheng, 44, is a former managing director of Silver Lake Investments. He graduated from Yale University with the highest honors with degrees in computer science and economics.
It is these "cobain" born technology entrepreneurs who make SenseTime soar all the way on the track of artificial intelligence:
In 2015, one of the earliest deep learning frameworks in China, SenseParrots, was independently developed.
In 2016, the smart life software platforms SenseME and SenseMARS were launched, and the autonomous driving platform Smart Auto was launched.
In 2017, the City Ark platform was developed, which supported the management of 11 megacities with more than 10 million people.
In 2018, SenseTime began to develop its own AI chips. Two years later, the STPU chip tape-out for the computing center was mass-produced, and the commercial use has exceeded tens of thousands of scales.
By 2021, sensetime has more than 22,000 AI models and more than 8,000 patent applications.
Among them, the largest and most high-profile SenseCore AI device is the infrastructure that SenseTime has built for the industrialization of AI.
While the industry is full of horsepower, the computer vision summit CVPR has senseTime almost every year, which can be described as the two blossoms of the academic industry.
For example, in this year's CPVR, SenseTime has 66 papers selected, including one that has been selected as the best paper candidate.
Over the past few years, SenseTime has ranked first in the world in the total number of papers presented at the world's three major computer vision conferences.
And these top academic bulls and academic achievements can naturally attract the same top computer science talents.
As of June 30, 2021, SenseTime has a total of 40 professors and 3,593 technical R&D personnel, including more than 250 doctoral and doctoral candidates.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="118" > super gold absorption: 33.6 billion yuan in 8 years and 12 rounds of financing</h1>
SenseTime's Hong Kong listing will adopt a structure of same share and no-split rights, and the share capital will be divided into Class A shares and Class B shares.
Class A shares can cast 10 votes per share and Class B shares can cast one vote per share.
The Board of Directors will consist of eight Directors, four of whom will be the Founders as Executive Directors.
The company's shareholding structure disclosed in the prospectus is as follows:
Among them, the shares owned by the main founders are:
1. Tang Xiaoou owns 6,906,080,602 Class A shares through Amidon Benefits, and indirectly controls 1,891,820,000 Class B shares, with a ratio of 21.73%;
2. Xu Li owns 286,317,668 Class A shares through XWorld Benefits, with a ratio of 0.9%;
3. Wang Xiaogang owns 232,171,633 Class A shares through InfinityVision, with a ratio of 0.73%;
4. Xu Bing owns 104,190,097 Class A shares through Vision Worldwide, representing a ratio of 0.33%.
In addition, Xu Li, Wang Xiaogang and Xu Bing held Class B shares through SenseTalent, with a proportion of 12.17%.
Other shareholder bodies include:
Softbank's 14.88% stake;
Taobao China Holdings Limited, a subsidiary of Alibaba, holds 7.59% of the shares;
Primavera Capital holds 3.08%;
Silver Lake Capital holds 3.05%;
IDG Capital holds 1.42% of the shares.
To date, SenseTime has completed 12 rounds of financing with a total amount of US$5.2 billion (about 33.658 billion yuan).
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="136" > The future of SenseTime and how to evaluate it? </h1>
In senseTime's prospectus, the business structure and business model have been basically determined, and the future is mainly a clear plan for the next step after the fundraising.
First of all, 60% is used for R&D investment to enhance R&D capabilities.
Among them, 10% of the AI infrastructure IsenseCore is used for supercomputing centers, 10% for AI chips, and 15% for model capability improvement. A further 25% will be invested in technical models, products and industry-university-research.
Secondly, 15% was used for business expansion, mainly for emerging business opportunities and domestic and foreign market expansion penetration.
Finally, 15% is used for investment mergers and acquisitions.
SenseTime said it will seek outbound strategic investment and M&A opportunities to expand the AI ecosystem and its influence in various industries.
With senseTime officially launching its IPO, it also means that the technology company that has come out of the "laboratory" has reached the moment of being tested by the open market.
From the incubation of the Chinese University Laboratory in Hong Kong in 2014 to the submission of the prospectus in Hong Kong in 2021, SenseTime has set a distinct and record-setting company in the past 8 years.
First, SenseTime is the first AI super unicorn born in Hong Kong, raised in the mainland, and facing the world.
With Hong Kong's academic and technical skills, with the help of the mainland's markets, scenarios and policies, it has quickly laid its global position and influence, and SenseTime is the most representative new species and an innovative achievement under one country, two systems.
Second, SenseTime is also a typical industry-university-research case in the global WAVE of AI innovation.
Starting from academia, scientists start businesses, explore the boundaries of technology, land commercial applications, and finally promote the landing of new technologies into thousands of industries.
In SenseTime's prospectus, 40 professors, 250+ phDs and phD students, 3593 scientists\engineers...
All are the core embodiment of the wave of AI development, which also means the high threshold, high difficulty and great challenge of AI technology entrepreneurship.
At the same time, it is worth noting that SenseTime has begun to show its technical and product capabilities for large-scale commercial use.
In the commercial landing of large plates such as commerce, cities, life and automobiles, each plate is an incomparably huge market, but each field of SenseTime has achieved large-scale landing, and the side also reflects the general value of AI technology such as "electricity".
And this commercial landing is not only related to its algorithm model and specific products, but also related to its deep, hard, and even infrastructure.
SenseTime has an original self-developed AI model, also developed its own AI chip, and built a complete set of end-to-end, bottom-to-application infrastructure, which is also a key element of its sustainable operation, which is the judgment of the next stage of AI racing.
Therefore, from the development path of SenseTime, in fact, we can also glimpse the evolution of this wave of AI in the world.
Finally, SenseTime's prospectus and development history also prove one thing:
China is on the same starting line as the world in the AI wave, and even has the opportunity to lead.
The more than 70 global champions, more than 600 top academic papers, and more than 8,000 AI patents disclosed by SenseTime in the prospectus are the best proof.
And citing Sullivan's report, SenseTime is also the highest-paid AI company in Asia.
Although the wave of AI and commercialization are not comparable to the scale and speed of the Internet and mobile Internet.
But this is also the first time in half a century that China is no longer in a state of follower in the wave of information technology innovation.
Previously, whether it was the Internet or the mobile Internet, it could only be the same trend as Silicon Valley and the United States, in the following sequence, and could only carry out business model innovation on the basis of other people's technological innovation, and use more efficient operational capabilities to build advantages.
However, the facts of the past few years have proved that only the underlying foundation and original technology have the right to speak, in order to truly have independent, safe and sustainable advantages.
And this is exactly the hope that AI technology innovation companies, including SenseTime, have shown.
If business innovation takes 5 to 10 years to take effect, then technological innovation + business innovation may take longer.
This also means that for technological innovation enterprises, industries in the technological innovation cycle, need longer-term patience.
And now, as more and more AI companies go to the public market, the most cutting-edge technological innovation waves and achievements can make more people believe because they see it through a more public form.
You tell me?
Prospectus Portal:
https://www1.hkexnews.hk/app/sehk/2021/103756/documents/sehk21082702574_c.pdf
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