Lenovo has committed to hiring 12,000 new research and development (R&D) professionals over the next three years.

The announcement was made during Lenovo's annual company kick-off, where chairman and CEO Yuanqing Yang set out the company's vision for the year ahead. Alongside the hiring commitment, Yang also said that R&D investment will be doubled during the 2022/23 financial year, as the company looks to stay ahead of new and emerging IT architectures.

Last year, the Chinese-American tech giant hired 5,000 R&D workers to support research into what it calls "Client-Edge-Cloud-Network-Intelligence". The newly announced hires will work on new hardware and software to help customers stay ahead of emerging technology trends, such as edge computing and the metaverse.

"Our intention is to optimize between technology with quick market returns and foundational research, and between continuous improvement and breakthrough innovation," Yang said.

Yang also outlined Lenovo's ongoing pledge to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050, in line with the company's Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) commitments.

While Yang didn't speak specifically about diversity and inclusion at today's event, in Lenovo's 2020/21 Environmental, Social, and Governance Report from earlier this year the company showed that it had managed to broaden its recruiting efforts and improve its onboarding process to hire tech workers from a wider variety of backgrounds.