Chinese financial giant Ping An Insurance (Group) Co will spend more than 7.77 billion yuan ($1.16 billion) on technology research and development this year, and artificial intelligence will be the focus of that R&D, according to a senior executive of the company.

"We want to build more platforms in finance and healthcare industries this year and in the near future," said Ericson Chan, CEO of Ping An Technology, a subsidiary and technology arm of Ping An Group. "We will continue to focus on providing technology services for the group as well as share more with the whole society."

Established in 2008, Ping An Technology has about 4,000 technology workers and has paid attention to R&D in cognition, robot advisory and cloud businesses. Their applications are mainly used in finance and healthcare industries; up to now, there have been more than 200 application scenarios.