With hope to continue developing Amazon’s presence in the U.K, the company has announced its big plans to open a new Research and Development site in Cambridge to supplement the already operating ones in Edinburgh and London.

The new 60,000 square foot facility, which is scheduled to open this coming autumn, will reportedly be able to house over 400 employees, consisting of machine learning scientists, knowledge engineers, data scientists, mathematical modelers, speech scientists and software engineers.

The new R&D facility will provide a large amount of new job opportunities for scientists and engineers and by the end of 2017, Amazon aims to have created over 5,000 new roles across the country, which will bring its total U.K. workforce to 24,000.

Amazon’s new R&D centre will have an extensive innovation focus, working on projects like drone technology, which will create flying warehouses that will hover over cities and deploy drones for quick delivery in areas where demand is expected to be high. Amazon will also further develop its voice-activated ecosystem including its Al voice activated assistant Alexa and its smart speaker shell Echo.

Matt Hancock, the Minister of State for Digital and Culture, described the new facility as a fantastic opportunity for the country. He believes that Amazon’s increased investment in developing cutting-edge technology in Cambridge is another vote of confidence in the U.K. as a world-leading centre of invention and innovation.

Amazon strives to constantly invent and grow its innovation story on behalf of its customers by continuing to invest into R&D. If your company too is involving innovation into its business practices it may qualify for an R&D tax credit. To find out more contact one of our Swanson Reed R&D tax specialists today.