Rani Molla
is a senior correspondent at Vox and has been focusing her reporting on the future of work. She has covered business and technology for more than a decade — often in charts — including at Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal.
But even by doubling its previous fiscal year’s spending of $2.5 billion, Alibaba will still fall far behind its American counterparts. Last year its most obvious rival, Amazon, spent $16.1 billion on R&D, more than any company in the world.
According to Bloomberg, part of the increased spending will go toward “moonshot” projects and a research unit that will set up R&D labs around the world.