The rideshare app Didi Chuxing first made waves last August when it bought out Uber’s business in China in a $35 billion deal.  Part of the deal entails Uber CEO Travis Kalanick joining his rival’s board of directors and Didi founder Cheng Wei joining Uber’s.

Since both companies made large investments in each other’s businesses, Didi insists it has no plans on expanding in the United States. Rather, the Beijing-based company wants to draw on Silicon Valley’s large talent pool for a brand-new research and development facility.

Based in Mountain View, Calif., Didi is looking to engineer its own artificial intelligence technology for self-driving cars, just like Uber. The research division poached one of its rival’s top engineers, Charlie Miller, who made headlines in 2015 for hacking an autonomous Jeep. Another high-profile hire, Jia Zhaoyin, is now Didi’s principal engineer after leading Google’s self-driving project, Waymo.

Excited to announce I’m joining Didi Research America to lead the safety and security of their autonomous transportation systems.

— Charlie Miller (@0xcharlie)

California is becoming a mecca for artificial intelligence thanks to its large tech industry and the state’s legalization of testing self-driving cars. As part of its investment, Didi’s projects include researching cloud-based security, AI analytics, computer imaging and deep learning. The company also made heavy investments in rideshare apps outside its market, like Brazil’s 99 and India’s Ola Cabs.

More recently, Didi partnered with nano degree startup Udacity for attracting the best talent in the industry, launching a $100,000 contest for building autonomous safety technology.

— Akhil Kalepu, digital coordinator and technology columnist