Terminus Group
Chinese AIoT firm building 'city brain' platforms and AI agents for government and industry.
On the record
Checkpoint: Hong Kong IPO decision on Terminus's long-pending listing
The call
Terminus is growing fast on legacy government contracts while its AI-agent pivot has one customer tied to its own founder and its IPO stays stuck.
Terminus Group builds video-tracking and sensor-linking software that Chinese cities use to manage traffic, safety, and utilities. The company has real customers and real revenue, but the job is getting easier for bigger rivals like Alibaba and Baidu to do themselves, and new AI tools can now handle the basic pattern-spotting work that used to be hard and expensive. The real test is whether the company can go public on the Hong Kong exchange (it has been trying for years) and whether its new AI agent product, called Hali, can land paying customers outside the founder's own businesses.
Why
01
AI pressure: Foundation models / multimodal LLMs (e.g. from Alibaba, Baidu). Cheap foundation models can replicate the rules-based video analytics and sensor dashboards that still make up much of Terminus's revenue base. Could AI do the core job? Yes, likely.
02
Bigger players: Alibaba Cloud (City Brain), Huawei, Baidu. All three already run smart-city AIoT platforms at far greater scale, with deeper government trust and cheaper capital than Terminus. Could a giant copy it? Yes, easily.
03
What protects it. Decade-long municipal relationships and embedded systems-integration contracts that are slow for city governments to rip out.
What would change this call
Whether Terminus's HK IPO actually prices within the next 6-12 months. Shows whether public markets validate its business model and valuation.
Whether Hali lands a disclosed, non-affiliated enterprise customer beyond founder Victor Ai's own Buttons venture. Shows whether the AI-agent pivot has real independent commercial traction.
Whether gross margins in future filings move toward software levels versus staying in systems-integration range. Shows whether the business is shifting from low-margin integration work to defensible software.
Whether Hali lands a disclosed, non-affiliated enterprise customer beyond founder Victor Ai's own Buttons venture. Shows whether the AI-agent pivot has real independent commercial traction.
Whether gross margins in future filings move toward software levels versus staying in systems-integration range. Shows whether the business is shifting from low-margin integration work to defensible software.
Key numbers
- 2024 revenue ~$258M, up 83.2% YoY
- Industrial digitalization segment grew 162.9% to RMB1.64B
- HK IPO still unlisted since Sept 2023 filing
Named risks
- Hong Kong IPO pending since September 2023 with no confirmed listing date as of mid-2026.
- Hali AI agent's only disclosed deployment is inside founder Victor Ai's own affiliated brand Buttons.
- Revenue figures are company-disclosed prospectus numbers, not independently audited.
- Legacy video analytics and IoT dashboard business exposed to commoditization by foundation models.
- Larger domestic incumbents Alibaba, Huawei, Baidu have equal or greater government trust and capital.
Rivals, as read in July 2026
| Rival | Direction | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Alibaba Cloud (City Brain) | contesting | Larger domestic smart-city AIoT platform with no structural entry barrier vs Terminus, as of 2024-2025 |
| Huawei | contesting | Runs large-scale government urban digitalization platforms competing for same municipal contracts |
| Baidu | contesting | Domestic AI giant active in city-brain style smart-city digitalization, pressuring Terminus's core business |
| SenseTime | gaining on | Restructured Oct 2024 toward AI cloud/LLM infrastructure, competes in vision AI and is a Terminus Series D investor |
| Megvii, CloudWalk, Yitu (Four AI Dragons) | contesting | China's deep-learning computer-vision peers compete for overlapping smart-city surveillance contracts |
Questions people ask
- Is Terminus Group profitable in 2026?
- No audited profit figures are public. Terminus's own IPO prospectus reports revenue of RMB1.843bn (about $258M) in 2024, up 83.2% year over year, but these are company-disclosed, unaudited figures and no net income figure has been reported as of mid-2026.
- Has Terminus Group gone public yet?
- No. Terminus filed for a Hong Kong Main Board IPO in September 2023, refiled September 26, 2024, and updated its prospectus with FY2024 financials in May 2025, but as of mid-2026 it remains unlisted with no confirmed pricing date.
- Who owns Terminus Group?
- Terminus is privately held and venture-backed. China Everbright Limited has been an investor since the company's 2015 founding by Victor Ai. Other disclosed backers include SenseTime, JD.com, IDG Capital, Warburg Pincus, and CITIC Group, per its own IPO filings.
- Could AI replace Terminus Group's smart-city business?
- Terminus's legacy video analytics, IoT dashboards, and sensor fusion products are the kind of narrow perception-AI workloads foundation models increasingly commoditize. It faces direct competition from Alibaba Cloud's City Brain, Huawei, and Baidu, all with larger scale and equal government trust in China's smart-city market.
- Does Terminus Group's Hali AI agent have real customers?
- Hali launched November 14, 2024 at Web Summit Lisbon. As of its October 2025 deployment in the Solemate robot, its only disclosed use is inside Buttons, a luxury brand affiliated with Terminus founder Victor Ai, with no independent third-party enterprise customer disclosed.
- Who is Terminus Group's biggest competitor?
- Alibaba Cloud (City Brain), Huawei, and Baidu all run larger, government-trusted smart-city AIoT platforms in China with no structural barrier keeping them out of Terminus's market. China's computer-vision 'Four AI Dragons' (SenseTime, Megvii, CloudWalk, Yitu) also compete for similar contracts.
Timeline
- 2025-10-24Buttons launches Solemate robot powered by Terminus's Hali AI agent with 3D spatial memory
- 2025-05-05Terminus updates HK IPO prospectus with FY2024 revenue of RMB1.843bn, still unlisted
- 2024-11-14Hali AI agent launched at Web Summit Lisbon via affiliated brand Buttons
- 2024-09-26HK IPO refiled under Chongqing Terminus Smart Technology, sponsored by CITIC and Haitong
- 2024-06-07Partnership announced with Chinese Academy of Sciences for Chongqing Edge Computing Lab
- 2023-12Series D of about $276M closed, co-led by Yuyao Yangming and AL Capital, SenseTime participating
- 2023-09First HK IPO draft prospectus filed
- 2022-09TacOS 3.0 smart-city operating system launched
- 2020TacOS platform launched; Terminus becomes Official Premier Partner at Expo 2020 Dubai with 150+ robots
- 2015Terminus founded by Victor Ai; China Everbright Limited becomes original investor
Revision history
25 July 2026
First assessed. Protection under test. The text above is fixed as of this date and is not edited afterwards.
In the same band
Sources
- DeepSeek's rise lifts Terminus as AIoT firm reports revenue growth (2025-05-05)
- Sprawling IoT networks enhance China's urban spaces (2020-12-26)
- Caplight (2023-12-29)
- CB Insights (2025-11-24)
- Chinese AI firm Chongqing Terminus Smart Technology files papers for Hong Kong IPO (2024-09-26)
- Terminus aspires to lead the AI industry (2021-10-01)
- Terminus Group Partners with Chinese Academy of Sciences (2024-06-07)
- ZoomInfo (2026-07-14)
- Buttons launches Solemate, a luxury robot powered by Terminus's Hali AI agent (2025-10-24)
- PitchBook (2025-01-01)
- China Everbright Limited
- HKEX Year in Review (2026-01-05)