Megvii
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Megvii Technology Limited (Chinese: 旷视科技), also known by the name of its flagship product Face++, is a Beijing-based artificial intelligence company specializing in computer vision, deep learning, and Internet of Things (IoT) solutions. Founded in October 2011 by three graduates of Tsinghua University, Megvii is widely recognized as one of China's "Four AI Dragons" (AI 四小龙) alongside SenseTime, CloudWalk, and Yitu Technology. The company operates the world's largest computer vision research institute and has won 49 championships in international AI competitions since 2017.
Megvii develops AI-powered products and platforms across three business segments: Consumer IoT (personal devices), City IoT (urban management and public safety), and Supply Chain IoT (logistics and warehouse automation). Its core offerings include the Face++ facial recognition platform, the Brain++ AI productivity platform, the open-source MegEngine deep learning framework, and the MegBot series of autonomous mobile robots.
The company has raised approximately $1.98 billion across multiple funding rounds from investors including Alibaba Group, Ant Group, Bank of China, and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, reaching a valuation of over $4 billion by 2019. In October 2019, the U.S. Department of Commerce placed Megvii on the Entity List over alleged connections to surveillance of Uyghur minorities in Xinjiang, significantly affecting the company's trajectory. After years of regulatory delays, Megvii withdrew its Shanghai STAR Market IPO application in late 2024.
Megvii was founded in October 2011 in Beijing's Zhongguancun technology district by Yin Qi, Tang Wenbin, and Yang Mu. All three co-founders were members of the prestigious "Yao Class" (姚班) at Tsinghua University, an elite undergraduate computer science program established in 2005 by Andrew Yao, a recipient of the Turing Award. The Yao Class accepts only the top three engineering students from each Chinese province, making it one of the most selective computer science programs in the country.
Yin Qi, who hails from Anhui province, was recognized as a mathematical prodigy from a young age and was recruited into the Yao Class as a teenager. While still an undergraduate at Tsinghua, Yin interned at Microsoft Research Asia, where he worked on facial recognition projects. After graduating in 2010, he briefly pursued a master's degree at Columbia University but returned to China, drawn by the rapid pace of Beijing's technology scene. In 2011, he approached his classmates Tang Wenbin and Yang Mu about founding a startup focused on computer vision.
The company's name, "Megvii," reflects the founders' shared belief that intelligent machines would need "a pair of eyes," with the name evoking "mega vision." The Chinese name, 旷视 (Kuangshi), translates roughly to "broadened vision."
| Name | Role | Background |
|---|---|---|
| Yin Qi (印奇) | Co-founder, CEO (until 2024) | Tsinghua Yao Class graduate; former intern at Microsoft Research Asia; MIT Technology Review Innovators Under 35 (2018); later became chairman of StepFun and Qianli Technology |
| Tang Wenbin (唐文斌) | Co-founder, CTO | Tsinghua Yao Class graduate; winner of the Yao Award (2009); Chinese Science Person of the Year (2019); led development of Brain++ |
| Yang Mu (杨沐) | Co-founder | Tsinghua Yao Class graduate; gold medalist at the 2010 International Olympiad in Informatics; leads cloud computing and mobile device operations; Forbes 30 Under 30 China (2018) |
Megvii develops software and hardware products organized around three core business segments, all underpinned by its proprietary Brain++ platform and MegEngine deep learning framework.
Face++ is Megvii's flagship product and one of the world's largest computer vision platforms. Launched in 2012, it was the first online facial recognition platform in China. The platform provides APIs and SDKs for face detection, face comparison, face search, and facial attribute analysis. By 2019, Megvii had become the largest provider of third-party identity verification software globally.
Face++ is deployed across a wide range of applications:
| Application Area | Description |
|---|---|
| Mobile payments | Powers the "Smile to Pay" function in Alipay, enabling Ant Group's facial recognition payment system |
| Smartphone unlock | Provides 3D facial recognition for smartphone manufacturers including OPPO, Vivo, and Xiaomi; integrated into over 50 phone models |
| Identity verification | FaceID platform used for online identity authentication across banking, fintech, and government services in 220 countries and regions |
| Access control | Intelligent cameras and access control systems for corporate buildings, residential complexes, and public venues |
In 2018, Megvii's facial recognition algorithms powered the OPPO Find X, which the company claimed was the first commercially mass-produced Android smartphone with 3D structured light technology for face recognition.
Brain++ is Megvii's proprietary AI productivity platform that serves as the underlying infrastructure for the company's algorithm training and model development. Brain++ integrates three components:
| Component | Function |
|---|---|
| MegEngine (天元) | Deep learning framework for training and inference |
| MegCompute | Cloud computing platform for dispatching and managing computational resources |
| MegData | Data management platform for organizing, annotating, and curating training datasets |
Brain++ enables Megvii's researchers and engineers to develop, train, and deploy neural network models at scale. The platform supports the company's work across all three business segments.
MegEngine, branded as 天元 (Tianyuan, meaning "the origin of everything" and also the center point on a Go board) in Chinese, is Megvii's deep learning framework. Originally developed internally in 2014, MegEngine was open-sourced in March 2020, positioning it as a Chinese alternative to frameworks such as PyTorch and TensorFlow.
MegEngine provides a unified platform for both training and inference, supporting both static and dynamic computation graphs. It is optimized for a variety of hardware platforms and is compatible with PyTorch models. The framework is particularly effective for tasks involving large volumes of image and video data, including image classification, object detection, and video analytics.
The open-sourcing of MegEngine was part of a broader trend among Chinese technology companies to reduce reliance on U.S.-developed platforms, particularly after the 2019 Entity List restrictions.
Megvii entered the smart logistics and warehouse automation market with its MegBot series of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) and the Hetu operating system. This business segment represents the company's Supply Chain IoT division.
| Robot Series | Type | Payload Capacity | Key Features |
|---|---|---|---|
| MegBot-E Series | Bin Handling Robot | Varies | Designed for bin-to-person picking operations |
| MegBot-F Series | Forklift Robot | Up to 1,600 kg | Autonomous forklift for pallet handling |
| MegBot-T Series | AMR (QR Code Navigation) | 800-1,000 kg | T800 (800 kg, 2.1 m/s) and T1000 (1,000 kg, 2.25 m/s) models |
| MegBot-S Series | AMR (SLAM Navigation) | Varies | Uses simultaneous localization and mapping for navigation |
| MegBot-L2000 | Heavy Transport Robot | Up to 2,000 kg | For heavy-duty material handling |
The MegBot-T800 has received EU CE certification and has been deployed across industries including medicine, apparel, third-party logistics, food cold chain, manufacturing, and new energy.
Hetu (河图) is Megvii's robotics and IoT operating system for supply chain management. Launched in January 2019, Hetu serves as a central control platform that connects and coordinates Megvii's robots and third-party automated logistics equipment within warehouses and distribution centers.
Key capabilities of Hetu include path planning algorithms, storage location optimization, job scheduling, load balancing, and dynamic warehouse management. The system provides open APIs for warehouse execution systems (WES), transport execution systems (TES), and robot control systems (RCS).
Hetu has been deployed in over 100 warehouses since its launch. In one benchmarking project in the apparel industry, Hetu dynamically managed more than 10,000 commodity SKUs and tens of thousands of storage locations while coordinating over 80 four-way pallet shuttles. One Asian warehouse project coordinated approximately 400 intelligent robots navigating autonomously within a single facility.
Megvii markets its logistics solutions under a "3A" framework: AS/RS (Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems) + AMR (Autonomous Mobile Robots) + AI.
Megvii's City IoT segment provides AI-powered vision solutions for urban management. These solutions enable intelligent deployment and management of IoT devices across various urban settings, including surveillance cameras, traffic sensors, and other connected devices.
Applications include public safety monitoring, traffic flow optimization, and urban resource planning. Face++ has been integrated into Alibaba's City Brain platform, which analyzes CCTV networks in cities to optimize traffic and detect incidents requiring police or medical attention.
City IoT was historically Megvii's largest revenue segment. From 2017 to 2020, it accounted for 52.18%, 63.56%, 65.99%, and 64.35% of total revenue, respectively.
Megvii operates what it describes as the world's largest computer vision research institute. The company has made notable contributions to the field of deep learning and computer vision through both competition results and published research.
Since 2017, Megvii's research teams have won 49 first-place finishes in major international AI competitions. The company's most prominent results have come in the COCO (Common Objects in Context) Challenge, one of the most authoritative competitions in computer vision.
| Year | Competition | Results |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | ICCV COCO Challenge | Won 3 first prizes and 1 second prize across 4 categories, beating teams from Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and SenseTime |
| 2018 | ECCV COCO Challenge | Won 4 of 6 tasks: Object Detection, Panoptic Segmentation, Person Keypoints Detection, and Mapillary Panoptic |
| 2019 | ICCV COCO Challenge | Won 3 first-place finishes in Detection, Keypoints, and Panoptic challenges |
In 2017 and 2018, Megvii also outperformed Google, Facebook, and Microsoft in image recognition tests at the International Conference on Computer Vision.
Megvii's research lab developed ShuffleNet, a family of computation-efficient convolutional neural network architectures designed for mobile devices with limited computing power. Published in 2017, ShuffleNet introduced two key techniques: pointwise group convolution and channel shuffle, which reduce computational requirements while maintaining accuracy.
ShuffleNet achieved a 7.8% lower top-1 error rate than MobileNet on the ImageNet classification task at a computational budget of 40 MFLOPs. In 2018, testing by Alphabet's AI team confirmed that ShuffleNet outperformed MobileNet in both efficiency and accuracy.
Megvii subsequently published ShuffleNet V2 in 2018, which proposed practical guidelines for efficient network architecture design by evaluating direct metrics on target platforms rather than relying solely on FLOPs as a proxy.
Megvii has raised a total of approximately $1.98 billion across 10 funding rounds from 25 investors. The company's major funding history is as follows:
| Round | Date | Amount | Key Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seed | 2012 | Undisclosed | Legend Star (Lenovo incubator) |
| Series A | June 2013 | Undisclosed | Sinovation Ventures (Kai-Fu Lee's fund), Comet Labs |
| Series B | August 2015 | $25 million | Ant Financial (first investment) |
| Series C | November 2017 | $460 million | Foxconn Technology Group, Ant Financial, Sunshine Insurance Group, SK Group, Russia-China Investment Fund, China Reform Holdings |
| Series D | May 2019 | $750 million | Bank of China Group Investment (BOCGI), ICBC Asset Management, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Macquarie Group |
| Series E | April 2025 | Undisclosed | Ant Group, Legend Holdings, Chongqing Industrial Investment Fund |
Alibaba Group made its first investment in Megvii during a Series D round in September 2018. As of July 2023, Ant Group and Taobao China Holding (both Alibaba affiliates) held a combined 29.4% stake in the company, making Alibaba's ecosystem Megvii's largest outside shareholder.
The company's valuation reached over $4 billion following the May 2019 Series D round. By 2023, Megvii was listed on the Hurun Global Unicorn Index with a valuation of RMB 17 billion, which rose to RMB 18.5 billion by 2025.
As a private company, Megvii's financial data is primarily known through its IPO prospectus filings. The company has experienced consistent revenue growth but has also recorded significant net losses due to heavy investment in research and development.
| Year | Revenue (RMB) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 854 million | First year reported in prospectus |
| 2019 | 1.26 billion | Growth despite Entity List placement in October |
| 2020 | 1.39 billion | Continued growth amid COVID-19 pandemic |
City IoT (urban management solutions) has historically been Megvii's largest revenue contributor, accounting for roughly 60-65% of total revenue from 2017 to 2020.
Megvii has reported significant net losses as it invested heavily in research and development:
| Period | Net Loss (RMB) |
|---|---|
| 2018 | 2.8 billion |
| 2019 | 6.64 billion |
| First three quarters of 2020 | 2.85 billion |
These losses reflect substantial R&D spending and the accounting treatment of preferred share fair value changes, a common factor for venture-backed technology companies. The company invested approximately RMB 1.2 billion in R&D in 2024.
Megvii's path to a public listing was marked by repeated setbacks across three separate attempts over five years.
In August 2019, Megvii filed its first prospectus with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, targeting an IPO worth between $500 million and $1 billion. Two months later, the Trump administration placed Megvii on the U.S. Entity List. The filing lapsed in early 2020 without proceeding.
In March 2021, Megvii filed for an IPO on the Shanghai Stock Exchange's Science and Technology Innovation Board (STAR Market), with CITIC Securities as sponsor. The prospective financing amount was RMB 6.018 billion ($887.5 million), with planned proceeds allocated as follows:
| Allocation | Amount (RMB) |
|---|---|
| Basic R&D center construction | 2.2 billion |
| AI vision IoT solution and product development | 1.12 billion |
| Intelligent robot development and upgrade | 580 million |
| Sensor research and design | 856 million |
| Supplementary liquidity | 1.26 billion |
The STAR Market listing committee approved Megvii's application in September 2021. However, the issuance registration procedure was suspended in March 2022 because the financial information in the listing documents had expired. The process resumed later, but regulatory inquiries regarding data compliance and customer relationships continued to delay the listing.
In late November 2024, Megvii and CITIC Securities jointly withdrew the IPO application. The Shanghai Stock Exchange subsequently terminated its review. In a public statement, Megvii said the withdrawal was "based on a comprehensive consideration of technology trends, industry environment, and its own strategic choices." This marked the company's third failed attempt at going public.
On October 9, 2019, the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security added Megvii to the Entity List alongside seven other Chinese technology companies, including Dahua Technology, Hikvision, iFLYTEK, and SenseTime. The stated reason was the use of these companies' technology in connection with human rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities in China's Xinjiang region.
The Entity List designation restricts Megvii from purchasing American products, including hardware components and software, without a special license from the U.S. government. Megvii objected to the designation, stating that "its products are designed for commercial uses" and that the company requires its clients "not to weaponize our technology."
On December 16, 2021, the U.S. Department of the Treasury added Megvii to the Non-SDN Chinese Military-Industrial Complex Companies List (NS-CMIC). This action prohibited U.S. persons from purchasing or selling any publicly traded securities of Megvii. The Treasury stated that Beijing Kuangshi Technology Co., Ltd. (Megvii's Chinese subsidiary) "has developed customized software designed to conduct surveillance activities of ethnic minorities, including Uyghurs, including AI software that could recognize persons as being part of the Uyghur ethnic minority and send automated alarms to government authorities."
In May 2019, Human Rights Watch reported finding Face++ code within the Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP), a police surveillance application used to collect data on Uyghurs in Xinjiang. However, Human Rights Watch issued a correction in June 2019, stating that Megvii did not appear to have collaborated on the IJOP app and that the Face++ code found within it was inoperable.
Separately, a confidential internal document revealed that Huawei and Megvii had worked together on a facial recognition system that included a "Uyghur alert" function, which could identify a subject's ethnicity and flag members of the Uyghur minority to authorities.
Megvii stated that only about 1% of its 2018 revenue came from projects in Xinjiang, and that it generated no revenue from the region in the first half of 2019.
In 2019, Megvii established an AI Ethics Committee and Institute focused on principles including integrity, human oversight, technical robustness, fairness, accountability, and data protection. The committee was intended to address growing public concern about the ethical implications of facial recognition technology.
Megvii is one of China's "Four AI Dragons" (AI 四小龙), a group of four Chinese AI companies that rose to prominence in the mid-2010s through their work in computer vision and facial recognition. Together, these four companies accounted for roughly 51% of China's domestic computer vision market share at their peak.
| Company | Founded | Headquarters | IPO Status | Notable Focus |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SenseTime | 2014 | Hong Kong | Listed on Hong Kong Stock Exchange (December 2021, $767M IPO) | Facial recognition, autonomous driving, large language models |
| Megvii | 2011 | Beijing | IPO withdrawn (November 2024) | Face++, logistics robotics, MegEngine |
| CloudWalk | 2015 | Guangzhou | Listed on Shanghai STAR Market (May 2022) | Incubated at Chinese Academy of Sciences; smart city solutions |
| Yitu Technology | 2012 | Shanghai | IPO suspended (2021) | Healthcare AI, voice recognition |
Of the four, SenseTime and CloudWalk successfully completed public listings, while Megvii and Yitu did not. All four companies were affected to varying degrees by U.S. sanctions and the challenges of monetizing AI technology at scale.
By the mid-2020s, the four companies diverged in their strategies. SenseTime and CloudWalk pivoted toward large language models, leveraging their existing GPU data center infrastructure. Megvii and Yitu pursued more cautious paths, with Megvii focusing on its logistics and IoT businesses.
In 2024 and early 2025, Megvii experienced significant leadership changes. Co-founder and CEO Yin Qi took on roles outside the company. In November 2024, he was appointed chairman of Lifan Technology (later renamed Qianli Technology), a Geely-backed smart driving company based in Chongqing. In January 2026, he was named chairman of StepFun, a Chinese AI startup focused on large language models, which completed a record RMB 5 billion ($690 million) Series B+ funding round. These moves marked Yin Qi's transition from facial recognition technology to the automotive and foundation model sectors.
Co-founder Tang Wenbin continues to serve as CTO, focusing on the company's ongoing technology development.
Megvii operates in a competitive landscape that includes both Chinese and international players in computer vision and AI.
Beyond the other three "AI Dragons," Megvii competes with major Chinese technology companies including Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba (which is also a major investor), and Huawei, all of which have developed their own computer vision capabilities. In the logistics robotics segment, Megvii faces competition from companies such as Geek+ and Hai Robotics.
Globally, Megvii competes with companies such as NEC Corporation, Cognitec, Idemia, and Amazon's Rekognition service in the facial recognition market. In the deep learning framework space, MegEngine competes with PyTorch, TensorFlow, and Baidu's PaddlePaddle.
As of mid-2019, Megvii served 339 corporate clients across 112 cities in China. Its diversified customer base includes financial technology companies, banks, smartphone manufacturers, third-party system integrators, property managers, logistics companies, and manufacturers. Notable customers and partners include Ant Group (Alipay), OPPO, Vivo, and Didi Chuxing.
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Legal name | Beijing Kuangshi Technology Co., Ltd. (北京旷视科技有限公司) |
| Trading name | Megvii (旷视科技) |
| Founded | October 2011 |
| Headquarters | Jinnovation Park Building S1, No. 27 Jiancaicheng Middle Rd, Beijing, China |
| Employees | Over 3,000 (as of 2024) |
| Industry | Artificial intelligence, computer vision, IoT |
| Valuation | RMB 18.5 billion (Hurun Global Unicorn Index, 2025) |
| Key products | Face++, Brain++, MegEngine, MegBot, Hetu |
| Website | megvii.com |