S&P Global’s President and CEO Douglas Peterson told Caixin in a recent interview that it’s not in a hurry to earn a profit in China, but hopes to build a base of local knowledge and expertise and to provide another voice in the local market.

In January, S&P Global Ratings, S&P’s ratings subsidiary, won approval to be the first foreign firm to go solo to conduct a ratings business on the Chinese mainland. Yet controversy emerged as it decided to adopt separate rating mechanisms specially tailored for the Chinese market.

When talking about AI-startup Kensho, which S&P acquired last year for $550 million, Peterson said that its machine-learning tools are phenomenal at extracting and linking data much faster with a much higher level of accuracy than humans are.

He gave a large ratings business in the U.S.’ public finance as an example, which involves small-size bond issuers like municipalities and schools and universities. “With Kensho, we can now surveil that large group of clients and read hundreds of newspapers every day continuously and pick out information.”

A previous version of this post misstated Douglas Peterson’s titles at S&P Global Inc. He is the company’s president and CEO.

Read the interview in full here.