CHINESE startup SenseTime is considering an initial public offering (IPO) on Shanghai’s tech-focused STAR Market after its latest fundraising that will value the company at US$10 billion, sources with knowledge of the matter said.

The artificial intelligence company, which the Trump administration put on a trade blacklist in October last year, is expected to raise US$1.5 billion from the funding round which is due to be completed soon, the sources said.

SenseTime, which provides technology-based applications including facial recognition, video analyzing and autonomous driving, has been in talks with securities regulators for the Shanghai listing in recent weeks, one of the sources said.

The plan for listing on the year-old STAR Market for startups is still preliminary with size and timetable undecided, said the sources.

One of the sources said that SenseTime’s STAR listing process would take a while, and that there was no obvious valuation benchmark for investors as its main homegrown rival Megvii has not listed yet.

SenseTime’s founder Tang Xiaoou said in 2017 that the startup was considering a listing in United States, Hong Kong, or the mainland.

The U.S. ban has made an overseas listing difficult, if not impossible, as global investors and investment banks are likely to shy away from companies being targeted by the United States, two of the sources said.

The firm was among eight Chinese tech companies placed on the U.S. entity list in October amid trade tensions between China and the United States.

SenseTime said at the time that it strongly opposed the U.S. ban and would work with relevant authorities to resolve the situation.

Reuters reported in December that the five-year-old startup had told investors it expected its 2019 revenue to increase by more than 200 percent year on year to around US$750 million despite China-U.S. tensions.

(SD-Agencies)