Alibaba says it will invest more than $15 billion over three years in global research program

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba announced Wednesday it will invest more than $15 billion over the next three years into a global research and development program to increase collaboration and develop new technologies. That sum was slightly more than double the total amount Alibaba spent on R&D between 2014 and the fiscal year that ended March 31, 2017. The program is called the Academy for Discovery, Adventure, Momentum and Outlook -- DAMO Academy for short. As part of the program, Alibaba will set up seven research labs in Beijing, Hangzhou, San Mateo and Bellevue in the U.S., Moscow, Tel Aviv and Singapore, and recruit 100 researchers to staff them. 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.