Alibaba, NTU Singapore launch AI institute

SINGAPORE - Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group and Singapore's Nanyang Technological University jointly launched a research institute on Feb 28 through the signing of a memorandum of understanding. It is Alibaba's first joint research institute outside of China, and will be made up from a pool of 50 researchers from both organizations.

The institute will seek to combine NTU's human-centered artificial intelligence technology which has been applied to areas such as health, homes and communities, with Alibaba's leading technologies, including natural language processing, computer vision, machine learning and cloud computing, to further explore real-life AI solutions and develop technology breakthroughs.

Chief technology officer Zhang Jianfeng said at the ceremony that Singapore was an important market for Alibaba, and a key hub for the company in Southeast Asia, offering e-commerce, cloud computing and payment solutions to customers in various industries around the region.