Megvii
More info
- Founded
- 2011
- Founders
- Yin Qi et al.
- Type
- AI (facial recognition)
Beijing company behind the Face++ facial-recognition platform, founded by Tsinghua students and, like SenseTime, blacklisted in the US.
Megvii (旷视科技) was founded in 2011 by Yin Qi and two classmates from Tsinghua's elite "Yao Class." Its flagship Face++ became one of the most widely used facial-recognition platforms in China, powering everything from phone unlocking to payments and surveillance.
Like SenseTime, Megvii landed on the US Entity List in 2019 over links to surveillance in Xinjiang. The company, backed by Alibaba, tried to go public several times without fully succeeding — a sign of how hostile the investment climate had become for Chinese surveillance-AI firms after the sanctions.