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Bloomberg
SenseTime Group Ltd., one of the world’s most valuable artificial-intelligence startups, is setting up a hub in Abu Dhabi for Europe, Middle East and Africa with plans to hire hundreds of engineers.
The Chinese facial recognition firm, which counts Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. as an investor, will start work on the research and development center this year and build AI capabilities across seven industries including healthcare, remote sensing and education, according to a statement. The Abu Dhabi Investment Office, which seeks to attract businesses to the emirate, will provide a support package as part of the partnership.
“The SenseTime formation team is coming to Abu Dhabi next week to establish the new office. This means we will already have a small team ramped up in 2019,†said ADIO Chief Executive Officer Elham Al Qasim. “Hiring will start this year and will be boosted to around 250 jobs by the end of next year.â€
Abu Dhabi is working on ensuring that right quality and right volume of talent comes in to support tech companies. “We will create a community by putting very large tech companies and start ups side by side so they may both benefit in various ways, including fluidity of talent,†Al Qasim said.
SenseTime specialises in systems that analyse faces and images on an enormous scale and works with policing bodies, retailers and health-care researchers in China and internationally. The startup has said it experienced 400% growth in past years.