Alibaba Group provides the fundamental technology infrastructure and marketing reach to help merchants, brands, and other businesses that provide products, services, and digital content to leverage the power of the internet to engage with their users and customers. Its businesses are comprised of core commerce, cloud computing, digital media and entertainment, innovation initiatives, and others.
In October 2017, Alibaba opened a lab in Israel with the goal of creating innovative machine learning and computer-vision technologies to empower and enlarge Alibaba's diverse business. This lab is part of an Alibaba Group global initiative called DAMO, where researchers and engineers work together on emerging products and technologies.
The company established this research center with the acquisition of the Israeli start-up Visualead, which raised investments from Alibaba in 2015. Visualead developed a new kind of "dot-less" QR code that Alibaba has been using for its business in China.
In 2019, Alibaba acquired InfinityAR, which specializes in sensor fusion, computer vision, and navigation technologies. InfinityAR joined the existing local R&D team.
In June 2022 Alibaba closed R&D center in Israel.