Megvi Technology, an artificial intelligence firm based in Beijing will according to the reports will be seeking approval on Thursday for an initial public offering in Hong Kong, in spite of its presence on a United States government blacklist for its part in alleged rights violations.
As per the reports from Reuters on Tuesday, the firm is looking at proceeds of minimum 500 million dollars from the listing. That figure is nearly 50% of the 1 billion dollars as per the aim of Megvii in an August initial public offering plan filed in Hong Kong. The firm has not yet made any decision regarding if it has to forge ahead with the listing when given approval, Reuters told.
Megvii that is being backed Alibaba is the owner of Face ++, which is a facial recognition developer that gives provision of technology to business, government, as well as, retail clients. In the previous month, Megvii was added by the US to a trade blacklist, making a claim that firm had involvement in rights violations in Xinjiang, which is Muslim-majority region of China. These allegations have been denied by the government of China.
It was stated by Megvii at the time that it had strong objection with the decision of the United States and that there were not any grounds for adding it to the list. The co-sponsors with JPMorgan and Citigroup, Goldman Sachs stated that it was re-evaluating its terms with the deal “in light of the recent developments.”
On the matter, Megvii completely denied to pass any comment. JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs had not replied to the request of Caixin to pass any comment by the time of publication. Caixin was not able to get into contact with Citigroup for comment.
