Yitu wins Shanghai government contract and considers IPO on city’s new exchange

Yitu Technology has reached a deal with municipal authorities in Shanghai as part of a campaign to increase artificial intelligence projects in the city, according to Intelligence Online. The report also suggests that Yitu is considering an initial public offering (IPO) on Shanghai’s new technology stock market.

The Dragonfly Eye facial recognition platform is used by provincial security offices and a number of cities in China, and at Chinese banks and borders, and is also used by police in Malaysia. Yitu opened a London office in 2018 to address the European market, and also recently launched an office and R&D center in Singapore. The company’s rapid growth in China parallels Beijing’s increasing surveillance network buildup as it seeks to monitor its 1.4 billion citizens, according to the report.

Yitu is supported by state players China Industrial Bank and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), as well as U.S. venture capital firm Sequoia Capital.

Right up until its inclusion on the U.S. Entity List last year, barring American companies from working with it, Yitu has continued to post impressive results in NIST testing.

Yitu is valued at $2.4 billion, according to Intelligence Online, and is part of China’s Artificial Intelligence National Team (AINT), a group of tech companies selected by the government to compete with the U.S. in the AI sector. Huawei, Xaiomi, Megvii and Hikvision are also part of AINT.

Article Topics

artificial intelligence  |  biometrics  |  China  |  facial recognition  |  IPO  |  stocks  |  Yitu Technology