A Chinese surveillance company may have just become the most valuable AI startup in the world

Chinese facial recognition technology developer SenseTime Group Ltd may be worth as much as $US4.5 billion. SenseTime says investors including Chinese e-commerce company Suning.Com and Singapore state fund Temasek Holdings helped close its series-C fundraising round. But the biggest pile-in came from Alibaba, which topped the round up to $US600 million. The company would not disclose its total valuation, but "two people with knowledge of the matter" told Reuters it brought SenseTime's value up to around $US4.5 billion. The company has claimed it "set a world record" for the amount raised in a single funding round by an AI firm. A series-B push led by China's CDH Investments and state-backed fund Sailing Capital in July valued the startup at over $1.5 billion.