SenseTime CEO on IPO, Regulations
Chinese artificial intelligence giant SenseTime debuts today. Bloomberg spoke to CEO Xu Li in early December, prior to sanctions from the Biden administration, and discussed the company's business strategies.
Cofounder, Sensetime
Search every verified Bing Xu interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote โ each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. In a December 2021 interview prior to SenseTime's Hong Kong IPO, CEO Xu Li discussed the company's use of proceeds, regulatory environment, and international expansion. Xu stated that 60% of the IPO capital would be invested in research and development, specifically to build an artificial intelligence algorithm center for mass-producing AI models and reducing costs. He described this as a "more fundamental but more difficult path" and said the company was already seeing scaled effects from its investments in R&D talent and infrastructure. Xu also expressed confidence in a "very clear path to achieving profitability for the next few years." Regarding regulation, Xu argued that "timely interactive regulation" benefits emerging industries, warning that premature rules may not reflect technological boundaries, while late regulation can be painful. He advocated for "agility" and "immediacy" in regulation, with companies engaging academics and regulators. On data security, Xu said SenseTime prioritizes the issue and believes technology providers should understand safe data processing, calling for industry standards. Addressing U.S. sanctions, Xu stated the entity list "has no basis" but acknowledged it "hurts our overall plan and development for international expansion," requiring additional communication to comply with export controls.
“We would like to invest the proceeds from this Hong Kong IPO in infrastructure and R&D in artificial intelligence.”
“Sixty percent of the capital raised in this IPO will be spent in research and development to build up an infrastructure called an artificial intelligence algorithm center which will be used for mass production of AI models.”
“The production cost for technology is the key factor in commercializing it โ the second phase of industrialization is to reduce the cost to a lower level so it can be used in all kinds of scenarios in our daily lives.”
“We chose a more fundamental but more difficult path by investing in AI infrastructure at an early stage; this investment including investing in R&D talent accounted for a large portion of our R&D expense, and we are already seeing the scaled effect from our investments.”
“SenseTime always attaches great importance to data security; to some extent the owner of data is the data processor, but we believe that technology providers should understand how to safely process data using the technology.”
“We believe timely interactive regulation will benefit the emerging industries, especially for the ones in high-speed development; premature regulations can't appropriately reflect the boundary of an industry and the technology if the regulators haven't yet fully grasped the changes in the technologies.”
“That's why we always believe that two parts of regulations are needed for emerging technologies: first agility โ adjust content and intensity as perspectives evolve; second immediacy โ companies should engage in active communications with academics and regulators to embrace the changes in a timely fashion.”
“The U.S. entity list has no basis, but it indeed hurts our overall plan and development for international expansion; it requires us to do more communication to explain the details of the export control when expanding businesses in some places.”
“We are seeing a very clear path to achieving profitability for the next few years thanks to our early investment in AI infrastructure.”
Chinese artificial intelligence giant SenseTime debuts today. Bloomberg spoke to CEO Xu Li in early December, prior to sanctions from the Biden administration, and discussed the company's business strategies.
Sign in to search the full transcript archive, filter by topic, and access every quote from Bing Xu.
The summary and quote tags on this profile are produced with AI assistance from verified, first-person interview transcripts, then checked by our team to confirm the speaker's identity and the accuracy of every quote. See how we verify →