(Yicai Global) July 24 -- Taobao Holding, a unit of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding, has sold all of the remaining class B shares it held in SenseTime Group, the artificial intelligence startup said on July 21. 

Alibaba has been cutting its stake in SenseTime since the second half of last year. Before SenseTime went public in Hong Kong in December 2021, Alibaba owned about 2.4 billion of its class B shares, according to the firm’s listing prospectus, while the figure was 2.3 billion at the end of 2022.

Since April, Hangzhou-based Alibaba has further trimmed its holding in SenseTime, selling around 557 million shares at an average price of HKD1.82 on July 6 and cashing out about HKD1 billion (USD127.9 million). Its stake dropped to 3.2 percent from 5.3 percent, while the value of SenseTime's stock more than halved.

After gaining by as much as 1.7 percent in the morning trading session, SenseTime’s shares [HKG: 0020] ended today 2.3 percent down at HKD1.68 (22 US cents) apiece, giving the company a market capitalization of CNY56.2 billion (USD7.2 billion). 

Hong Kong-headquartered SenseTime was listed at HKD3.85 per share and raised nearly HKD5.8 billion (USD742 million) in its initial public offering. The stock reached a record high of HKD9.70 in January last year. 

SenseTime secured USD600 from a C-series financing round led by Alibaba in 2018, when its valuation exceeded USD3 billion. Several well-known institutional investors have also poured funds into SenseTime, including Temasek Holdings, SoftBank Group, CDH Investments, IDG Capital, and StarVC.

Revenue fell 19 percent to CNY3.8 billion (USD528.1 million) last year, while the AI firm’s net loss narrowed 65 percent to about CNY6.1 billion, according to SenseTime's 2022 earnings report. Its losses have totaled CNY43.8 billion since 2018.

The company has four major segments: smart city, smart life, smart auto, and smart business. It unveiled its self-developed large language model, SenseChat, in April.

Editor: Martin Kadiev