Mubasher: Chinese Alibaba on Wednesday announced plans to invest north of $15 billion in over the next three years under a global research and development programme, which aims to boost collaboration and develop new technologies.
The new figure is “slightly more than double” the total amount e-commerce giant invested on research and development between 2014 and the fiscal year that ended 31 March, 2017, according to CNBC.
Named Academy for Discovery, Adventure, Momentum, and Outlook, or DAMO Academy for short, the programme will entail seven research labs in seven cities and hire 100 researchers to staff them.
The DAMO Academy programme will be launched in Beijing and Hangzhou in China, San Mateo and Bellevue in the US, Moscow, Tel Aviv, and Singapore.
Alibaba further highlighted that the new programme will help the company fulfill its long-term commitment to serve two billion customers and create 100 million jobs in 20 years.
“Those labs will undertake projects in areas of data intelligence, Internet of Things, financial technologies, quantum computing and human-machine interaction, including machine learning and Natural Language Processing,” according to CNBC.
The labs will also collaborate with several large institutions including the University of California, Berkeley through its RISE Lab.
