Chinese largest artificial intelligence firm SenseTime Group Inc. today it has raised about $700 million from its initial public offering on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

SenseTime sold 1.5 billion of its shares priced at HK$3.85 (49 cents), which was at the low end of its price range. The raise means the company now has an estimated market value of more than $16 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported.

SenseTime’s IPO was the first major overseas offering by a high-profile Chinese tech firm since the ride-sharing giant Didi Global Inc. went public on the New York Stock Exchange in July in defiance of its governments’ wishes, sparking a regulatory backlash from officials.

SenseTime was due to launch its IPO earlier this month, but was forced to postpone at the last minute after suddenly finding itself on a U.S. government investment blacklist. The company has been accused of allowing its facial recognition tech to be used by Beijing authorities to oppress Muslim ethnic minorities in the North Western Xinjiang region. However, SenseTime said it was later advised by its lawyers that the sanctions only applied to one of its unlisted subsidiaries. In any case, after restarting its IPO, the company barred U.S. investors from participating.

The restarted IPO was less ambitious. SenseTime had originally planned to raise up to $2 billion through its listing. However the exclusion of U.S. investors, combined with lower market sentiment, forced the company to scale back its ambitions. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Tech Index, which includes Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings Ltd., has lost around a third of its value this year.

With backers including Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp., SenseTime claims to be the largest AI software company in Asia. Notably, it said in its IPO filing it has an 11% market share in China’s computer vision software market, according to research by Frost & Sullivan.

AI is an area of high priority for officials in Beijing so SenseTime is likely to benefit from policy tailwinds, analysts say. On the downside, the bulk of SenseTime’s revenue is highly concentrated, with its five biggest customers accounting for almost 60% of its sales in the first six months of the year. Its largest single customer generated 23% of its revenue, alone.

SenseTime’s filing showed that 48% of its revenue came from providing facial recognition and computer vision software to municipal governments and their departments. Another 40% came from the enterprise sector. SenseTime says autonomous driving holds a lot of promise, but at present this accounts for just 4.3% of its revenue.

There are also questions over SenseTime’s unprofitability. The company has been spending more than 100% of its revenues on research and development and on building data centers and most of its IPO proceeds will be used for that.

Image: SenseTime