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Text by | Shang Ye

Edited by | Shen Xiao

In the AI arena, SenseTime has once again secured a top industry ranking. This time, SenseTime is not just part of a faction.

Previously, as one of the AI Four Little Dragons of the last era, SenseTime often benefited from the success of entrepreneurs from the SenseTime camp in the era of large models.

According to ITjuzi statistics, from January 1 to July 17, 2026, companies founded by entrepreneurs who once worked at SenseTime and left to start their own ventures have collectively raised over 40 billion yuan in funding.

Among them, Momenta and Minimax have successively completed listings on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Newer companies like VAST and Wuwenxinqiong have also become financing stars in the A venture capital circle.

These entrepreneurs are distributed across hot sectors such as autonomous driving, large models, 3D generation, AI chips, embodied intelligence, and AI applications. Entrepreneurs from the SenseTime camp are becoming increasingly active, while SenseTime itself has become relatively quiet.

SenseTime's new product in the AI office domain, Raccoon, is breaking this trend.

According to QbitAI's September AI Efficiency Office Monthly Report, Raccoon's web traffic reached approximately 15 million, with a month-over-month increase of over 160%. Its number of unique web visitors and average usage duration ranked second overall.

SenseTime subsequently summarized this achievement as "dominating the rankings" and further broke down the two overall second-place finishes into category-specific results: In the "Comprehensive Suite" category, Raccoon ranked first in both metrics.

This was no easy feat for SenseTime.

During the computer vision era, SenseTime did not need to explain who it was. From being one of the "AI Four Little Dragons" to becoming the "First AI Stock" at the time of its listing, it was once one of the most prominent companies in China's AI industry.

At that time, technology itself was the most important product narrative.

Entering the era of large models, SenseTime's business scope has become increasingly broad. From large models, AI cloud, and token factories to office agents, it has hardly missed any hot trend in the AI wave but is no longer frequently discussed by the public.

Raccoon's achievements have become a new milestone on SenseTime's AI transformation journey.

SenseTime Raccoon's impressive ranking comes from QbitAI Think Tank's September AI Application Monthly Report.

Among the more than 300 AI efficiency web products surveyed, SenseTime Raccoon surpassed AI star products from major companies such as Baidu Wenku, ByteDance Kouzi, and Alibaba Qoder, ranking fifth.

The rankings combine document tools, programming products, and office intelligent agents, comparing their website traffic.

In addition to monthly traffic, the rankings also separately compare the web traffic growth of desktop agents, with Raccoon ranking just behind Tencent WorkBuddy.

This sub-ranking compares the growth from February to September, and the claimed increase of over 15 million does not refer to new visits in September alone. Products like Doubao Work and Kimi Work were not included due to "data channel limitations."

In the other two metrics, Raccoon ranked second nationwide with approximately 9 million monthly active users and an average usage duration of over 6 minutes.

SenseTime subsequently distilled more eye-catching achievements from these rankings. An October 12 official website article stated that Raccoon ranked second overall in terms of unique web visitors and average usage duration; within the "Comprehensive Suite" category, it ranked first in both metrics.

These achievements came as Raccoon underwent a round of product and brand adjustments.

On August 25, Code Raccoon and Office Raccoon were unified under the name "SenseTime RaccoonWork." From AI programming to AI office, it emerged as an AI assistant covering more work tasks and introduced industry-specific versions for education, finance, and government affairs.

Raccoon ads also appeared in elevators of residential complexes and office buildings. Product updates, brand promotion, and increased web traffic followed in succession. By October, SenseTime compiled these rankings into a report card: Raccoon has entered the ranks of top AI office products.

So far this year, SenseTime has produced many such report cards.

Old businesses continue to contribute champions.

SenseTime announced mid-year that it had ranked first for ten consecutive years in IDC China's Visual AI Market statistics; in July, it cited an Omdia report on video analytics market share, announcing a global first-place finish.

New businesses also have their respective rankings.

Earlier this year, SenseTime announced that its DayDayNew V6.5Pro scored 75.35 points, ranking first domestically in the SuperCLUE Chinese Multimodal Visual Language Evaluation.

In August, its RuYing product for live streaming, marketing, and customer service became a focal point of promotion after SenseTime ranked second in IDC China's Enterprise AI Digital Human Market Share rankings.

By September, the large-scale infrastructure also had its own first-place finish. SenseTime cited Frost & Sullivan and LeadLeo Research Institute's "China Full-Stack AI Cloud Service Market Report 2026H1," announcing that it ranked first in China's Neocloud market with a nearly 50% share.

With Raccoon, promotion took a step further, with SenseTime beginning to emphasize who it stands alongside.

An Omdia study on enterprise office intelligent agents reviewed over 30 vendors and highlighted four representative products for independent analysis: Alibaba QianWen Office, Baidu Dazi, Tencent WorkBuddy, and SenseTime Raccoon. Subsequent promotional articles summarized this group as the "AI Office Top Four," even suggesting that "the table is full."

From the "AI Four Little Dragons" to the "AI Office Top Four," the names beside SenseTime have changed to Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent.

In October, the comparison expanded further. SenseTime announced its inclusion in the 2026 Fortune Future 120 list jointly released by Fortune and BCG, highlighting in its announcement that it was listed alongside companies such as NVIDIA, OpenAI, and Apple.

Using third-party rankings to build market recognition is a very common marketing approach in the tech industry. Product rankings prove certain capabilities, market share rankings show business scale, and Fortune rankings push the narrative toward the future of the entire company.

The core identity SenseTime wants to reshape is clear: a full-stack AI supplier that has completed generative AI transformation, possesses both technology and industry expertise, and has global growth potential.

But this new business card has not yet reached everyone.

On a stock forum, a netizen's joke, "What's Raccoon, a cookie?" may not reflect the product's market performance but highlights the contrast amid the flurry of ranking announcements.

SenseTime in the rankings has changed its peers. Can SenseTime in business gain corresponding growth advantages?

SenseTime has reasons to stand alongside major companies.

As one of the Four Little Dragons of the previous AI era, SenseTime's technical talent pool, government and enterprise delivery experience, and early-built computing power reserves are its core competitiveness in transitioning to the large model era.

A typical feature is that technical leaders who left SenseTime have all entered the AI field to start their own ventures and achieved significant results.

After former SenseTime vice president Yan Junjie founded MiniMax, its R&D expenses reached $297 million in the first half of this year, roughly equivalent to 2 billion yuan, exceeding SenseTime's same period 1.756 billion yuan in R&D spending.

Former SenseTime research executive director Liu Yu founded Vivix after leaving. According to reports, the company has received investments from IDG Capital, Sequoia China, JD.com, and Alibaba, with a valuation reaching $1.32 billion.

VAST (Song Yachen): AI 3D generation, valued at over $1 billion. Manifold Space (Wu Wei): Universal world model, raising hundreds of millions of yuan just months after founding. Wuwenxinqiong (Yan Shengen): AI computing infrastructure, with cumulative financing of nearly 1 billion yuan.

Compared to the discussion around these new AI forces from the SenseTime camp, SenseTime itself does not generate as much buzz.

In April 2023, SenseTime launched its self-developed large model, "DayDayNew." In the public rankings of independent evaluation agency Artificial Analysis, as of October 21, evaluations for QianWen, Zhipu, Kimi, and MiniMax can be found, but not for DayDayNew.

The investment required to maintain a technological edge has also changed. Computing power best reflects this change.

SenseTime's Lingang Computing Center was already operational in 2022, preparing infrastructure ahead of the large model boom.

However, Alibaba's capital expenditures in the second quarter alone reached approximately 67.7 billion yuan this year, primarily cast into AI infrastructure. In the same period, SenseTime disclosed fixed asset acquisition expenses (such as equipment) of approximately 2.3 billion yuan for the first half of the year.

What remains in SenseTime's hands is its years of experience serving government and enterprise clients. Raccoon is inheriting this legacy.

In an interview published on September 16, Jia An'ya, SenseTime's vice president of large model products and head of the Raccoon family, introduced the company's C2B path. Raccoon is rolled out to individuals, with user tasks and feedback used to refine the product, and then enterprise orders are secured through privatized deployment and system integration.

SenseTime is familiar with enterprise procurement and local deployment, but Alibaba, Tencent, Zhipu, and others are also entering this business with office software, customer relationships, and models.

Moreover, securing enterprise interest is just the first step. The greater challenge comes from the cost and profitability pressures behind orders.

SenseTime's financial reports over the past few years reflect the cost of this AI transformation.

Smart city and traditional vision projects, which once accounted for most of the company's revenue, have continued to contract amid industry changes and payment collection pressures.

In 2023, SenseTime restructured its business segments, merging non-generative AI businesses in smart cities, smart commerce, and smart living into "Traditional AI"; model training, fine-tuning, and inference businesses were grouped under "Generative AI."

The gap left by the contraction of old businesses began to be filled by new ones.

In 2025, generative AI revenue reached 3.63 billion yuan, accounting for 72.4% of total revenue and becoming the mainstay of group income; visual AI revenue was 1.083 billion yuan, falling to 21.6%. The remaining 6% came from X innovation businesses such as intelligent driving, healthcare, home robots, and retail.

However, generative AI is a capital-intensive model. The larger the computing power scale, the higher the hardware procurement and operational expenses for intelligent computing centers. Even as revenue grows, gross margins are continuously diluted by rising operating costs.

In 2025, the company's gross profit was approximately 2.056 billion yuan. Although it had recovered for two consecutive years from the 2023 low, the total was only about 60% of the 2021 figure.

The situation improved somewhat in the first half of this year. The gross margin recovered to 41.4%, and net profit of 617 million yuan marked the first time the company achieved profitability under international financial reporting standards since listing.

However, this included gains from investment valuation increases and the sale of subsidiaries. Adjusted for these factors, the loss was still 386 million yuan. Net cash outflow from operating activities was 764 million yuan, indicating that improvements are not yet sufficient for stable profitability.

Profitability and cash accumulation are still catching up, leaving capital markets lukewarm.

At listing, its market capitalization peaked at over 323 billion Hong Kong dollars at one point, but by the market close on October 20, it had fallen to less than one-sixth of that.

With a stack of impressive rankings in front of it, how can SenseTime move from sipping the broth of large models to sitting at the top table of large model leaders?

The real test has only just begun.