Huawei has announced a €70 million investment in Irish research and development over the next three years to support its growing business in Ireland.
The company has said the R&D will focus on the areas of video, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and site-reliability engineering. The work will be supported by over 100 researchers, experts and engineers Huawei employs across its R&D offices in Cork, Athlone and Dublin.
Huawei has been caught up in the year-long US-China trade war, with Washington imposing a trade ban on the company citing national security risks.
Just last week, the United States extended by 90 days a reprieve that permits Huawei Technologies to buy components from US companies to supply existing customers, but it also moved to add more than 40 of Huawei's units to its economic blacklist.
Making the announcement of the Irish investment today in Shenzhen, Guo Ping, Huawei Rotating Chairman said Ireland has outstanding talent and some of the best researchers in the world. "Our R&D efforts are diverse in Ireland, like software in Dublin and hardware in Cork. Ireland has a great opportunity to continue to grow as an economy and become a technological hub. We are looking forward to strengthening our relationship with our local customers and partners."
Jijay Shen, CEO of Huawei Ireland, said the company's focus is on long-term investment and building positive relationships with key partners in Ireland. He said this investment over three years will help us drive innovation and collaboration in Ireland.
The company's Dublin R&D office is part of Huawei’s European Research Institute and forms part of Huawei’s research ecosystem.
Huawei works with a number of Irish third-level institutions, including Trinity College Dublin, Dublin City University, University of Limerick, University College Dublin, and University College Cork.
The company also partners key Science Foundation Ireland centres such as Connect, Insight, Adapt and Lero. In 2018, Huawei Ireland received a Technology Ireland award for its work with Adapt which focused on a system that enables automatic in-scene detection and placement of advertisements in videos.
