Chinese artificial intelligence startup SenseTime plans to set up a research and development center in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates, to support the company’s business in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), according to the company’s official WeChat account.
The EMEA R&D research center will focus on developing AI technologies for the medical, smart home, and education sectors.
Xu Li, co-founder and CEO of SenseTime, said expanding into the EMEA region was in line with the company’s global strategy. As part of this strategy, SenseTime has set up offices in Japan and Singapore. In 2017 for example, the company formed a partnership with Honda to build smart cars.
SenseTime’s core computer vision technologies including face recognition, video analysis, character recognition are in use with companies like Qualcomm, NVIDIA, China Mobile, UnionPay, HNA, Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, Vivo, Weibo, and iFLYTEK.
The Beijing-based company raised USD 600 million in its Series C financing round led by Alibaba. That round of funding valued the company at around USD 4.5 billion, according to Reuters.