China’s top e-commerce firm, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, is launching a $15 billion drive to build overseas research hubs as the deep-pocketed firm looks to compete with global leaders in e-commerce, logistics and cloud technology.

The Alibaba Damo academy would launch eight research bases in China, Israel, the US, Russia and Singapore and was hiring 100 researchers to work on artificial intelligence, quantum computing and fintech, the company said in a statement yesterday.

“The Alibaba DAMO Academy will be at the forefront of developing next-generation technology that will spur the growth of Alibaba and our partners,” chief technology officer Jeff Zhang said.

The Alibaba Damo academy would launch eight research bases in China, Israel, the US, Russia and Singapore

The Chinese giant and its affiliates have undergone a rapid expansion in the past year, bringing it into direct competition with United States e-retailer Amazon.com Inc as well as global payments, cloud and logistics firms.

Since last year Alibaba has invested roughly two billion dollars to acquire a majority stake in Singapore-based retailer Lazada.com, creating a network of e-commerce hubs across Southeast Asia in partnership with payment affiliate Ant Financial.

It has also pursued a $1.2 billion bid for United States money transfer service MoneyGram, in a pending deal that has come under scrutiny from critics who say it poses a national security threat.

Along with an existing data science research lab in California, Alibaba has opened new data centres in Europe, the US, the Middle East, Australia, Japan, India and Indonesia since 2016, in a bid to boost its cloud business.