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Chinese e-commerce titan Alibaba announced today that it plans to invest more than $15 billion over the next three years in a global research and development program.

Fintech will be among the target areas of R&D.

Alibaba’s own internal research teams, and those of its affiliates, Ant Financial and Cainiao, as well as a about 100 additional researchers it will hire worldwide, will also be involved in the project, called the DAMO Academy, or the Academy for Discovery, Adventure, Momentum, and Outlook.

Currently, Alibaba employs about 25,000 engineers and scientists.

Alibaba Chief Technology Officer Jeff Zhang said the DAMO Academy will include the construction of a number of labs in China, the United States, Russia, Israel, and Singapore that will be devoted to researching data intelligence, financial technology, quantum computing, human-machine interaction, Internet of Things, natural language processing, and more.

Zhang will lead the Academy, along with an advisory board of researchers and educators from some of the world’s leading universities, including MIT, Harvard, Princeton, and Beijing University. The full list of individuals serving on the advisory board is available online at BusinessWire.com.

DOMA Academy will nearly double Alibaba’s annual R&D budget, which for fiscal year 2017 will total $2.6 billion.

Read more at: Bloomberg, Business Wire, CNBC, and Tech in Asia.