SenseTime’s 2024 Interim Revenue Up 21% YoY, Generative AI Business Revenue Surges 256% Contributing to 60% of Total Revenue, Strives to Seize Opportunities from Generative AI’s Golden Age

SenseTime Group Inc. (“SenseTime” or the “Company”, stock code: 0020), a leading global AI software company, announced its interim results today for the six months ended June 30, 2024 (“1H”).

In 1H 2024, the total revenue of the Group reached RMB1.7 billion, representing a 21% year-on-year increase. Of the Group’s three core businesses, the Generative AI revenue increased 256% year-on-year and accounted for 60% of the total revenue of the Group, becoming the Group's dominant business. This was driven by factors such as the robust demand for large language models (LLM) and AIDC from the Chinese market, the industry-leading capabilities of the SenseNova Large Model Series, a significant reduction in model inference costs, and a surge in model usage. According to a recent IDC[1] research report on market share in China, SenseTime, with its LLM platform and applications, ranked second with 16% of the market. SenseTime’s AIDC services also achieved 15.4% market share, which places it among the top three in the industry. In the field of Smart Pilot, SenseAuto doubled its revenue with the cumulative number of mass production delivery reaching 2.6 million vehicles. The SenseAuto team also strengthened its international presence through overseas projects with several Chinese automakers. During the on-road testing, the UniAD end-to-end autonomous driving system successfully processed complex instructions, further demonstrating its intelligent driving capabilities.

Dr. Xu Li, Chairman of the Board and CEO of SenseTime, said, "Generative AI is currently in its golden age, and we are well-positioned to capitalize on this wave of exponential growth. Our world-class large language model capabilities are underpinned by the deep synergy between ‘large-scale infrastructure + large language models’. This enables us to rapidly iterate models, achieve multi-modality and reduce inference costs, putting us ahead in a fiercely competitive market. As seen from the interim results, we have been taking active steps to achieve our strategic goal of pivoting towards Generative AI. Looking ahead, we will continue to spearhead the development of innovative technologies and drive industry momentum towards the next frontier of artificial general intelligence (AGI)."

Key Highlights of the Company’s Business Operations in 1H 2024

In July 2024, SenseNova was upgraded to version 5.5, with approximately 30% improvement in overall capabilities compared with version 5.0. The multi-modal capabilities have been comprehensively enhanced, achieving real-time interactive experiences on par with GPT-4o, making it the first multi-modal real-time interactive LLM in China. 

The overall usage of SenseNova has increased more than 400%, with a substantial increase in both the number of users and the average usage volume per user.

The impact of economies of scale in AIDC services are coming into effect. As of August 2024, the total operational computing power exceeded 20,000 PetaFLOPS, increasing around 70% from March 2024, which maintains SenseTime’s leading position in the industry.

In July 2024, SenseTime launched the Cantonese version of Sensechat free-of-charge for Hong Kong users. It is available as a mobile app and web version, which effectively meets the daily needs of Cantonese-speaking users for large models.

SenseAuto achieved a revenue of RMB168 million, a year-on-year increase of 100%. In 1H 2024, SenseAuto was confirmed as the designated supplier for 15 new vehicle models, with approximately 6 million vehicles in the pipeline, including overseas brands such as Volkswagen MQB and Toyota Lexus.

In spite of increased investment in the research and development of LLMs, the Group has actively optimized operating expenses to reduce losses. Overall period losses decreased by approximately RMB700 million year-on-year.

Business Review Highlights

Generative AI business continues a trajectory of rapid growth

In 1H 2024, the training and inference demands for generative AI continued to show strong growth. The application of generative AI has expanded beyond the internet industry, forming multiple substantial vertical markets.

Comprehensive range of enterprise solutions available: SenseTime has developed various sizes of models based on SenseNova 5.5 to provide comprehensive enterprise-level generative AI solutions covering cloud, on-premises data centers, and edge devices. During the period, over 3,000 leading companies in the industry utilized SenseTime's LLMs and AIDC services.

SenseNova empowers a wider range of industries: The customer base of the large model has been expanded from internet companies to include industries such as intelligent hardware, electric vehicles, robotics, healthcare, and finance.

Enterprise clients including Bank of China, China Merchants Bank, and Haitong Securities, have leveraged the Company’s financial LLM capabilities to develop financial vertical applications like employee assistants, compliance risk control, coding assistants, digital employees, marketing and sales.

Major hospitals such as Ruijin Hospital and Xinhua Hospital have leveraged the "SenseChat-Dayi" model such that LLMs become the intelligent hub of their hospitals. This enables intelligent functions in areas such as pre-consultation, consultation, medication consultation, follow-ups and multi-modal data governance.

Raccoon, SenseTime's coding and office AI assistant, has become one of the fastest-growing copilot products in China, with hundreds of thousands of users comprising individuals and developers. 

SenseChat-Character powers internet applications like Weibo, China Literature, iQiyi and IdeaFlow, with the daily usage increasing nearly 22-fold within the past six months.

SenseCore’s strengthened market leadership: The scale of AIDC has further expanded to 20,000 PetaFLOPS, an increase of around 70% from March 2024. Through innovations like training-inference integration and integrated management of computing and electricity, the overall operational return on investment of AIDC centers has increased. Its AIDC service capabilities have beenrecognized by industry clients, including internet companies such as JD.com, Xiaomi, and Kingsoft Office, three major telecom operators in Mainland China, automakers including Geely, universities such as Tsinghua University, and leading LLM start-ups.

Stable Deliveries for SenseAuto, Leading Breakthroughs in End-to-End Autonomous Driving Capabilities

In terms of mass production and deliveries, SenseAuto solutions were delivered to 705,000 new vehicles in 1H 2024, representing a year-on-year increase of 80%. The cumulative number of vehicles delivered reached 2.6 million, covering 104 vehicle models. In the field of Smart Pilot, SenseAuto continues to lead the development of UniAD, its mass produced and end-to-end autonomous driving system. At the 2024 Beijing Auto Show in April, UniAD delivered outstanding results, navigating complex real-world road conditions solely through visual perception without the need for high-precision maps. In the field of vehicle-to-everything, SenseAuto’s autonomous-driving minibuses are operating on routes in several cities, including Shenzhen’s Qianhai, Jiangsu’s Wuxi, Shaanxi’s Xixian, and Shanghai’s Lingang. The total mileage driven by SenseAuto’s autonomous driving minibuses has exceeded 3 million kilometers.

Corporate Social Responsibility

SenseTime is committed to green development and leveraging AI technology to build a sustainable future. Since 2024, SenseTime has taken multiple measures to improve both AIDC efficiency and energy efficiency. In smart healthcare, SenseTime has launched nearly 40 applications that have assisted tens of millions of individuals in disease screening, diagnosis and treatment. The company has also received the “AI Medical Device Innovation Task Winner” award, jointly announced by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the National Medical Products Administration in China.

In terms of AI Ethics & Governance, SenseTime’s “Financial Model Empowered AI Digital Employee – Bridge ‘Digital Divide’” case was successfully selected into the world’s first 40 “AI for Good” cases issued by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a United Nations agency. SenseTime has been highly recognized by the international community in its efforts to use AI technology to achieve sustainable development goals.

[1] July 2024, IDC Report “China's Intelligent Computing Services Market (2H 2023) Tracking”; August 2024, IDC Report “China's Large Language Model Platform Market Share, 2023: The Year of Large Language Models - Initial Situation”