One of China’s leading artificial intelligence start-ups, SenseTime, has sold out of a security joint venture in Xinjiang after an international outcry over the surveillance and mass detention of local Uighur people in the far-western Chinese region.
SenseTime, a facial recognition software company that supplies Chinese police, set up a “smart policing” company with Leon, a major supplier of data analysis and surveillance technology in Xinjiang, in November 2017.
It has now sold its 51 per cent stake in the joint venture, Tangli Technology, to Leon, which said Tangli would continue with its strategy and that its research team had mastered key technologies.