(Yicai Global) July 7 -- SenseTime, a leading Chinese artificial intelligence unicorn, broke ground in Shanghai today on a new-generation AI computing platform to support the technology’s development and use in all industries and help the city become an AI hub amid stiff global competition.

The platform, based in Shanghai’s Lingang New Area, will be ready by the end of next year, Yicai Global learned. It will be equipped with a SenseTime-developed AI training framework to provide large-scale data processing capacity for industrial-grade AI algorithm research and development and sufficient computing resources for city-level AI service applications.

Since its inception in 2014, SenseTime has set up AI computing platforms in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore.

The new platform will start by enabling local industries in Lingang to advance AI ecosystem construction in Shanghai and will further expand into business scenarios in other areas of the Yangtze River Delta region in the future, SenseTime said.

The Beijing-based company is in the process of raising USD1 billion to USD1.5 billion for a post-investment valuation of USD10 billion, tech we-media LatePost reported on July 2. SenseTime has not confirmed the report.

Another AI unicorn, Cambricon Technologies, plans to raise CNY2.6 billion (USD368 million) in an initial public offering on Shanghai's Nasdaq-like Star Market, according to a stock exchange filing yesterday.

In related news, another 17 industrial projects started construction in Lingang today, with a total investment of CNY48 billion (USD6.8 billion) and an annual output value of CNY80 billion after reaching design capacity. The projects cover key areas such as integrated circuits, new energy vehicles, AI, aerospace and biomedicine.

The Lingang New Area of Shanghai’s Free Trade Zone has notched up CNY25 billion in industrial investment so far and achieved about CNY155 billion in industrial output value and service revenue since it was formed last August.

Zhu Zhisong, executive deputy director of the Lingang New Area’s management committee, said Lingang will also attract targeted investment in key areas to strengthen the industrial agglomeration effect.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Peter Thomas