Chinese facial recognition company becomes world's most valuable AI start-up

The Chinese government's plans for mass surveillance using facial recognition have received a boost from one of the country's tech powerhouses, after Alibaba led a $600m investment in SenseTime, which develops technology for tracking individuals.

The company is working on facial and object recognition technology that accurately can spot people using cameras, recently demonstrated on CCTV in Beijing.

SenseTime already smashed the record for AI funding, beating British competitor DeepMind which was bought by Google for an estimated £400m in 2014, and in 2017 received $410million in its second round of funding.

US university Massachusetts Institute for Technology is working with SenseTime for its research into “human and machine intelligence”. It is already working with 40 local governments in China which use its CCTV recognition, helping spot people of interest during festivals and in airports.

SenseTime is partly funded by Qualcomm, a chip-company that US president Donald Trump blocked from what would have been one of the biggest technology mergers in history. Mr Trump quashed Qualcomm's planned purchase of another American chip maker over concerns it would risk national security.

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[What kind of sensitive technology access do you think China has gained through the partnership with MIT? --Editor]