Malaysia's sovereign wealth fund has appointed the founder of Chinese artificial intelligence pioneer SenseTime as a board member, marking the first time for the Southeast Asian country to formally appoint a foreigner to such a position at Khazanah Nasional.

Tang Xiao'ou, a Chinese national and also professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong, will advise on AI-related matters, SenseTime said in a statement on Monday night.

The move came after Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad visited SenseTime in Beijing in April. During that trip, SenseTime inked a deal with Malaysian technology company G3 Global Berhad and China Harbour Engineering Company Ltd to build Malaysia's first AI park.

The appointment is also seen as the latest push of Khazanah, which means treasure in Malay, to step up technology investments by attracting foreign expertise.

Focused on computer vision and deep learning, SenseTime was founded in 2014 and is widely recognized as one of the most promising AI startups in China. In June 2018, the Beijing-based company announced that it had raised $620 million in its Series C plus round of fundraising, which will accelerate its expansion overseas.