Hon Hai Precision, the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer and a major Apple supplier, plans to invest CNY27.3 billion ($4.3 billion) generated from a listing of one of its units in Shanghai to fund eight new projects, covering 5G, IoT and artificial intelligence (AI), Xinhua reported.

The Taiwan-headquartered company, which is also known as Foxconn, said shareholders approved a plan to list its subsidiary Foxconn Industrial Internet on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. The subsidiary’s listing prospectus, filed with the China Securities Regulatory Commission on 9 February, said the projects would focus on developing smart manufacturing platforms and cloud computing services. The prospectus did not disclose share pricing or the number of shares to be listed.

Foxconn Industrial Internet makes electronic devices, cloud service equipment and industrial robots. The filing shows it generated a net profit of CNY16.2 billion in 2017, up 6.3 per cent from 2016, on revenue of CNY355 billion, Reuters reported.

At an annual employee gathering in Taipei on 11 February, Foxconn chairman Terry Gou said the company has a great deal of work to do over the next two years to adapt to the manufacturing sector’s new realities and make it a more influential force in the global technology industry, South China Morning Post reported.

Gou said the company will expand investments in AI, automation and IoT to position it even more centrally in the tech supply chain.