Bosch sanguine on country's booming AI development

German industrial conglomerate Robert Bosch GmbH is bullish on prospects for applications of cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology and is actively expanding its research and development investment in the Chinese market, its top executive said.

Stefan Hartung, chairman of the board of management at Robert Bosch, said, "We have to see that China becomes not only a manufacturing location, but that it's also very much a research and development location, so about 10,000 of our 56,000 people are now engineers, mathematicians, physicists and people developing software that is made in China, for China."

He said in an interview with China Daily that the Chinese market is very research-intensive and Chinese consumers have very specific needs. Therefore companies need to also have R&D on the ground in China, and then the people can directly work with customers on the professional side to fit products with needs.