SenseTime launches SenseNova V6.5 at WAIC 2025

Background

WAIC 2025 was the setting for SenseTime's large-model forum, titled 'AI+: Large Model Shapes the Future'. The company used the event to present its latest model and the products built on it.

What happened

SenseTime launched SenseNova V6.5 at the forum it organised during WAIC 2025, and the announcement is dated 31 July 2025 ^[1]. The model introduced interleaved image-text chains of thought ^[1]. The Raccoon assistant received an agent upgrade at the same event ^[1].

Key details

SenseTime claimed a threefold cost-performance improvement over V6.0 ^[1]. It also said that Raccoon performed on par with Claude 4 Opus in data analysis ^[1]. These are company claims rather than independent results.

Xu Li, chairman and CEO, said the aim was to evolve AI from a tool into a core engine of productivity ^[1].

Impact

The event presented the model together with the Raccoon agent that uses it. For readers, it records how SenseTime described the two together and the goal it set for the agent.

Terms used here

An agent is a system that carries out a series of steps toward a goal, using tools and sometimes asking for information along the way. An assistant that only answers questions differs from an agent that completes a task, such as gathering data and producing an analysis.

Data analysis here means turning a dataset into findings, such as totals, trends and comparisons. Claims that a model is on par with another in a task usually refer to a specific test or kind of work, not to all use. A cost-performance ratio compares how much a model can do with what it costs to run, so a threefold improvement means the same spend buys about three times the measured performance, on the company's own measure.

For a reader, the key question about any such claim is which test was used and who ran it. The claims in this entry come from the company's own announcement.