Amazon.com Inc. intends to hire more than 100 engineers and scientists to work at a new research and development facility for machine learning that it plans to open in Barcelona, Spain, early next year.

The new R&D center will be housed in the same building as Amazon’s Seller Support Hub in Barcelona’s urban renewal startup area known as 22@. The Seller Support Hub is also scheduled to open in early 2018, and will serve online companies in Southern Europe selling on the Amazon Marketplace.

Amazon has been stepping up its machine learning efforts in Europe of late. Back in May, the company said it was expanding its Cambridge, England-based development center with 400 new hires to work on machine learning projects, as well as other fields of artificial intelligence.

Ralf Herbrich, director of machine learning at Amazon, said the new machine learning research unit in Barcelona will be focused on algorithms that automatically extract patterns from large collections of data to make accurate predictions.

The plan is to use these algorithms help forecast consumer demand for specific products, and to improve the capabilities of its AI-powered digital assistant Alexa, which currently handles voice commands only in English and German. The location of the new research unit in Barcelona is a strong hint that Amazon is planning to make Spanish the next language on Alexa’s virtual lips.

“Innovation is part of the DNA of everything that we do at Amazon. Machine Learning is improving our service to customers in many ways including adding convenience and allowing for lower prices, greater selection and better availability,” Herbrich said.

Also interesting is that Barcelona is home to several major universities, meaning the new research hub is situated to attract some of Europe’s best young talent.

“Our work in the field of machine learning is also creating high-profile job opportunities across Europe,” Herbrich continued. “We want to work closely with Spain’s scientific community and universities to advance state of the art research in Machine Learning.”

Amazon said it has already begin recruiting staff for the new R&D center, and has posted job listings for senior applied scientists and senior software development engineers.

Image: Adrienne Hoffman/Flickr