After more than one year of preparation, Tencent Research Institute, which has involved more than CNY100 million in investment, has been formally set up with Tencent's Chief Architect Dr. Zheng Quanzhan to be take control of its development.

Tencent says that as a core technology development platform for the company, Tencent Research Institute will be mainly focused on developing practical internet technology for the coming 2-5 years and improving the next generation's Internet innovation. In the meantime, it will work closely with first class research institutions across China to train high-end talent for the Chinese Internet industry.

Tencent has reportedly set up research institutes in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, respectively. All of them will focus on studying six major areas of storage technology, data mining, multimedia, Chinese language processing, distributed networks and wireless services. Zheng says that apart from the existing system, Tencent Research Institute will strengthen both internal and external exchanges in an effort to make it a technology exchange platform.

The establishment of a research institute is one of the measures that international high-tech companies have taken to ensure their technology innovation capacity. At present, IT giants like Microsoft, Google and Lenovo all have their own research institutions, but Tencent is one of the first Chinese domestic Internet company that has ever set up a research institution.