Huawei to invest €80 million to boost Irish R&D

Over the past 15 months, Huawei has created 200 jobs in Ireland, as well as investing EUR 60 million in R&D. In the next two years, Huawei says it will invest a further EUR 80 million in R&D in Ireland, doubling its commitment from 2019. The new jobs will meet a growing demand for Huawei’s products and services across its sales, R&D, IT development and in its consumer division. The company says has a strong focus on helping its business partners roll out 5G across Ireland in coming years. The jobs will be mainly based in its Dublin headquarters and across operations in Cork and Athlone, according to a press release from IDA Ireland, the countrys Foreign Direct Investment agency. “We are delighted to see such growth in our workforce and business. Huawei has a long-term commitment to Ireland, where since 2004 we have built a world-class team servicing our ever-growing consumer and enterprise customer bases. Today’s announcement is testament to the strength of those, as well as the ongoing success of our research and development programme, to which we committed €70 million in 2019. Our story in Ireland is one of mutual success, as we assist with the national digital transformation and Ireland continues to grow its international reputation as a pro-business environment with great talent available,” says Huawei Ireland Chief Executive Tony Yangxu. Huawei has a range of activities in Ireland, where it serves all of the major telecommunications providers with products and business solutions. Huawei’s R&D operations in Ireland work closely with Science Foundation Ireland research centres including Adapt, Connect and Lero while also having partnerships with DCU, Trinity, UCD, UCC and UL. Its R&D efforts in Ireland focus on the areas of video, cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), site-reliability engineering and 5G consumer use cases. IDA Ireland CEO Martin Shanahan added: “This is a welcome investment by Huawei which will add substantially to Ireland’s technology and R&D ecosystem. The company’s continued commitment to significant investments in R&D and creating high value jobs demonstrates Huawei’s confidence in Ireland and the talent pool available here.”