A Suning Commerce Group Co store in Changzhou, Jiangsu province. The company will invest $250 million in PPTV.com, taking 44 percent of the website and becoming its largest shareholder. [Photo / Provided to China Daily]

NANJING -- Suning Commerce Group Co Ltd, a major Chinese retailer and e-commerce giant, has opened its first overseas research and development center in Silicon Valley, according to the company on Wednesday.

The Suning Silicon Valley R&D Center, in San Francisco, United States, was formally unveiled on Tuesday local time.

Backed by an initial investment of $5 million, the center will serve as Suning's US hub for science and technology, the company said. Starting in 2014 with a staff of 50, Suning plans to employ 200 people by 2017.

With R&D centers in Beijing and Nanjing, Suning also plans to establish similar operations in New York and Seattle to advance its offline-to-online business model.

The center will cooperate with medium and small enterprises to study advanced commercial models in the US and identify strategic investment and acquisition opportunities, said Wang Jingxi, head of the center.

Founded in Nanjing of East China's Jiangsu province in 1990 as an air-conditioner specialty shop, Suning is now one of China's largest commercial enterprises with more than 1,600 chain stores in more than 600 cities on the Chinese mainland, in Hong Kong and Japan.

It employs 180,000 people and had revenues of $37.7 billion in 2012.