Sensetime’s generative AI growth boosts revenue by 21% in the first half of the year

Chinese artificial intelligence giant SenseTime has seen a jump in revenue of over 20 percent this year due to strong growth in its generative AI (GenAI) business, as the ten-year-old pioneer in the domestic industry strives to generate profits.

SenseTime’s revenue rose 21.4 percent year-on-year to 1.74 billion yuan ($244.3 million) in the first half of the year, the company said in financial results released on Tuesday.

Half-year revenue from the GenAI business – including AI data centers and large language models (LLMs), the technology underlying products such as OpenAIs ChatGPT – rose 256 percent year-on-year to 1.05 billion yuan and accounted for 60 percent of total sales, according to the company.

GenAI has become the company’s “dominant business,” driven by demand for its LLMs and AI computing infrastructure services in the Chinese market, SenseTime said in its report. But revenue from what the company calls traditional AI, which mainly consists of its smart city services, has declined 50.6 percent year-on-year.

The company reported losses of 2.4 billion yuan in the six months to June, down 21.2 percent from the same period last year. Losses for the full year 2023 were 6.49 billion yuan, according to the 2023 results.

Shares of SenseTime, which went public in Hong Kong in 2021, fell 5.93 percent to HK$1.11 in morning trading on Wednesday, still well below their IPO price of HK$5.50.

According to data recently released by research firm IDC, the company has emerged as a major player in the field of enterprise-focused GenAI services.

SenseTime is currently the second largest provider of LLMs for enterprises in mainland China with a market share of 16 percent, behind Baidu with 19.9 percent. IDC said in a report last weekHowever, the company noted that there could be significant changes in the rapidly evolving AI market.

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