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SenseTime
Tech

National AI champion SenseTime enters pact with China’s central bank amid digital currency trials

  • The collaboration aims to help strengthen ‘risk control and operational capabilities’ across financial institutions
  • The Digital Currency Research Institute, a unit of the People’s Bank of China, is overseeing development of a new sovereign digital currency

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Visitors walk past the stall of SenseTime at the Security China exhibition in Beijing in October 2018. The Hong Kong-based start-up is collaborating with a unit of the People’s Bank of China to push adoption of artificial intelligence in the country’s financial industry. Photo: Reuters
Sarah Dai

SenseTime, the world’s highest valued artificial intelligence start-up, has signed a pact with the digital currency unit of China’s central bank to speed up adoption of the latest AI technologies in the financial industry.

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The Digital Currency Research Institute, a unit of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) that is overseeing development of a new sovereign digital currency, entered into a cooperation agreement with SenseTime to pool their research and foster innovative new applications under a joint effort to deploy AI advances across the country’s financial sector, the Hong Kong Science Park-based company said in a statement on Monday.

The ultimate goal is to help strengthen “risk control and operational capabilities” across financial institutions, the statement said, without providing details of the initiative.

It marks the latest high-profile collaboration between the central government and major companies, as testing of China’s sovereign digital currency escalated this month and more reforms are planned for other domestic industries.

Pedestrians walk past the People's Bank of China headquarters in Beijing on March 17. the central bank’s Digital Currency Research Institute is overseeing development of China’s sovereign digital currency. Photo: Bloomberg
Pedestrians walk past the People's Bank of China headquarters in Beijing on March 17. the central bank’s Digital Currency Research Institute is overseeing development of China’s sovereign digital currency. Photo: Bloomberg
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Last week, the PBOC included large foreign consumer brands for the first time in tests of the sovereign digital currency. American fast-food chains Starbucks, McDonald’s and Subway were added to the central bank’s list of firms authorised to test the digital currency in small transactions with 19 local businesses.
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