The company is working on facial and object recognition technology that accurately can spot people using cameras, recently demonstrated on CCTV in Beijing.

Honda is using SenseTime for its driverless car research and development and it is also being used at shopping counters that allows customers to check-out using their faces.

SenseTime already smashed the record for AI funding, beating British competitor DeepMind which was bought by Google for an estimated £400m in 2014, and in 2017 received $410million in its second round of funding.

The company did not disclose its value but Reuters reported that insiders estimated the company could be worth $4.5bn.