In 1937, the year that George Orwell was shot in the neck while fighting fascists in Spain, Julian Chen was born in Shanghai. His parents, a music teacher and a chemist, enrolled him in a school run by Christian missionaries, and like Orwell he became fascinated by language. He studied English, Russian, and Mandarin while speaking Shanghainese at home. Later he took on French, German, and Japanese. In 1949, the year Mao Zedong came to power and Orwell published 1984, learning languages became dangerous in China.

SoftBank Vision Fund is seeking to invest almost $1 billion in China's SenseTime Group Ltd. as it seeks a stake in the world's most valuable artificial intelligence startup, people familiar with the matter said. The fund, created by SoftBank Group Corp., and SenseTime are still finalizing terms of the deal and the details could still change, the people said, asking not to be identified as the details are private. The company has already announced two other funding rounds this year as it raised more than $1.2 billion. SenseTime, a four-year-old startup, makes systems that analyze faces and images on a huge scale and contributes to China's vast surveillance system. The company is one of a host of local startups at the forefront of Beijing's goal of making the country the world leader in AI by 2030.