Megvii Expects IPO to be Approved This Week

Artificial intelligence software company Megvii, also commonly known as Face++, expects their plans for an IPO in Hong Kong to be approved this week, according to Tencent Technology News. The company filed its IPO prospectus with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in August.

Megvii has backers including Alibaba Group Holding and Sinovation Ventures, and was valued at about $4 billion as of the last fundraising round. However, the company was placed on the Entity List by the US government, leading to concerns about its valuation and potential IPO. However, Megvii denied the reports of a potential delay to their IPO plans following the blacklisting.

The company specializes in facial recognition, holding over 60% of the market share in cloud facial recognition technology. Megvii technology powers over 70% of Android smartphones manufactured in China that have facial recognition authentication functions. Megvii processed 2.4 million daily face ID verification requests on average in first six months of this year. The company is seeking to raise over $500 million in capital from the public offering.

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The company is one of the unicorns that has risen from China’s AI boom, pioneering innovation in computer vision. Megvii’s revenue saw a compound growth rate from 2016 to 2018 of 358.8%. In addition, the company has reported losses of 342.8 million yuan in 2016, 758.8 million yuan in 2017 and 3.3 billion yuan in 2018.