Protocol | China
China tech IPOs to watch in 2021
Three of China's four "AI dragons" will likely go public, joined by Didi and major parts of ByteDance.

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Three of China's four "AI dragons" will likely go public, joined by Didi and major parts of ByteDance.
A slew of Chinese startups went public in 2020, and it looks like Chinese tech IPOs will keep booming through 2021.
Three of China's "four AI dragons" (AI四小龙) are almost certain to go public this year. Some of China's biggest unicorns, such as ByteDance and Didi Chuxing, are also likely to join them.
Here are the China tech IPOs you need to know for 2021.
One of China's largest facial-recognition developers, Megvii is ready for an IPO on the Shanghai Stock Exchange's STAR board, according to an announcement posted by the China Securities Regulatory Commission in mid-January.
In November 2020, the Shanghai Stock Exchange accepted Yitu Technology's IPO request. The Shanghai-based AI unicorn intends to raise $1.16 billion.
In December 2020, the state-backed facial-recognition developer CloudWalk filed a prospectus with the Shanghai Stock Exchange, seeking to raise roughly $580 million in an IPO on the Star Market.
Competitor Kuaishou's $5.4 billion IPO has made people wonder just how big ByteDance's IPO could be. Last November, Bloomberg reported ByteDance was in talks with investors, including Sequoia, over funding that would boost its valuation to $180 billion, and was preparing some of its biggest assets — including Douyin and Toutiao — for an IPO in Hong Kong.
The Information reported on Feb. 3 that China's other large unicorn, Didi Chuxing, is in early discussions with Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase about a potential IPO later in 2021, targeting a $100 billion valuation. Reuters previously reported Didi could go public this year in Hong Kong.
Tencent News broke the story late January that SenseTime had completed a pre-IPO round of fundraising at the end of 2020 with a valuation of $12 billion. Investors are mostly Chinese state institutions, including state-owned insurance companies and local governments. SenseTime is considering a dual listing in Hong Kong and China, Bloomberg has reported.
The International Financing Review reported Hellobike is considering a U.S. IPO, seeking to raise up to $1 billion. Chinese-language tech website 36Kr confirmed the bike-sharing company's 2021 IPO plan. It would be China's first bike-sharing company to go public.
Online health insurance marketplace Waterdrop plans to file for a U.S. IPO in the first quarter of 2021, with an estimated fundraise of about $500 million, according to IPO Zaozhidao, a WeChat public account tracking IPO scoops. Goldman Sachs and Bank of America are among the underwriters. Last summer, Bloomberg reported Waterdrop was seeking a valuation of about $4 billion.
Internet recruitment platform BOSS Zhipin is working with Goldman Sachs and UBS on a U.S. IPO that could occur this year, with the goal of raising $300 million, according to IPO Zaozhidao.
Shen Lu is a Reporter with Protocol | China. She has spent six years covering China from inside and outside its borders. Previously, she was a fellow at Asia Society's ChinaFile and a Beijing-based producer for CNN. Her writing has appeared in Foreign Policy, The New York Times and POLITICO, among other publications. Shen Lu is a founding member of Chinese Storytellers, a community serving and elevating Chinese professionals in the global media industry.
Digital car windows, curved AR glasses, automatic presentations and other patents from Big Tech.
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Mike Murphy ( @mcwm) is the director of special projects at Protocol, focusing on the industries being rapidly upended by technology and the companies disrupting incumbents. Previously, Mike was the technology editor at Quartz, where he frequently wrote on robotics, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics.
Another week has come to pass, meaning it's time again for Big Tech patents! You've hopefully been busy reading all the new Manual Series stories that have come out this week and are now looking forward to hearing what comes after what comes next. Google wants to get rid of your double-chin selfie videos and find things for you as you sit bored at home; Apple wants to bring translucent displays to car windows; and Microsoft is exploring how much you can stress out a virtual assistant.
And remember: The big tech companies file all kinds of crazy patents for things, and though most never amount to anything, some end up defining the future.
Mike Murphy ( @mcwm) is the director of special projects at Protocol, focusing on the industries being rapidly upended by technology and the companies disrupting incumbents. Previously, Mike was the technology editor at Quartz, where he frequently wrote on robotics, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics.
An interview with Tom Lantzsch, SVP and GM, Internet of Things Group at Intel
Edge computing had been on the rise in the last 18 months – and accelerated amid the need for new applications to solve challenges created by the Covid-19 pandemic. Tom Lantzsch, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Internet of Things Group (IoT) at Intel Corp., thinks there are more innovations to come – and wants technology leaders to think equally about data and the algorithms as critical differentiators.
In his role at Intel, Lantzsch leads the worldwide group of solutions architects across IoT market segments, including retail, banking, hospitality, education, industrial, transportation, smart cities and healthcare. And he's seen first-hand how artificial intelligence run at the edge can have a big impact on customers' success.
Protocol sat down with Lantzsch to talk about the challenges faced by companies seeking to move from the cloud to the edge; some of the surprising ways that Intel has found to help customers and the next big breakthrough in this space.
A few years ago, there was a notion that the edge was going to be a simplistic model, where we were going to have everything connected up into the cloud and all the compute was going to happen in the cloud. At Intel, we had a bit of a contrarian view. We thought much of the interesting compute was going to happen closer to where data was created. And we believed, at that time, that camera technology was going to be the driving force – that just the sheer amount of content that was created would be overwhelming to ship to the cloud – so we'd have to do compute at the edge. A few years later – that hypothesis is in action and we're seeing edge compute happen in a big way.
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One day, you might not need to carry that physical passport around, either.
Mike Murphy ( @mcwm) is the director of special projects at Protocol, focusing on the industries being rapidly upended by technology and the companies disrupting incumbents. Previously, Mike was the technology editor at Quartz, where he frequently wrote on robotics, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics.
There will come a time, hopefully in the near future, when you'll feel comfortable getting on a plane again. You might even stop at the lounge at the airport, head to the regional office when you land and maybe even see a concert that evening. This seemingly distant reality will depend upon vaccine rollouts continuing on schedule, an open-sourced digital verification system and, amazingly, the blockchain.
Several countries around the world have begun to prepare for what comes after vaccinations. Swaths of the population will be vaccinated before others, but that hasn't stopped industries decimated by the pandemic from pioneering ways to get some people back to work and play. One of the most promising efforts is the idea of a "vaccine passport," which would allow individuals to show proof that they've been vaccinated against COVID-19 in a way that could be verified by businesses to allow them to travel, work or relax in public without a great fear of spreading the virus.
Mike Murphy ( @mcwm) is the director of special projects at Protocol, focusing on the industries being rapidly upended by technology and the companies disrupting incumbents. Previously, Mike was the technology editor at Quartz, where he frequently wrote on robotics, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics.