HONG KONG (Reuters). Alibaba (NYSE: ) Jack Ma is the founder of Group A, and he has been visiting Dutch research institutes to explore his passion for agriculture technology. The Hong Kong paper South China Morning Post reported that he was accompanied by people with knowledge about his visit.

Since he spoke out last year in disapproval of China’s regulatory system, the Chinese billionaire has been mostly hidden from public attention. Regulators quickly began to scrutinize his empire and the blockbuster $37 billion IPO of Ant Group, his fintech subsidiary was suspended.

Ma, China’s famed and prominent entrepreneur was seen in Hong Kong last October. Two sources said that he had met at most “a few” business associates during meals.

Two Spanish newspapers last week reported that he flew then to Mallorca on the Spanish island. This was his first overseas trip since his dispute with Chinese regulators.

Alibaba-owned SCMP published three images of Ma. These photos were taken as handouts.

Two of his photos showed him in a protective white dress and holding flowerspots. In the third, he was dressed in jeans and a hoodie. His caption stated that he was analyzing technology from aluminium extrusion specialist BOAL Systems.

According to SCMP, the billionaire who was appointed chairman of Alibaba in 2019 will be continuing his tour of European research institutes and companies involved in agriculture infrastructure and plant breeding.

Ma believed combining the technology he researched with Alibaba’s cloud computing, big data analysis and artificial intelligence could help modernise Chinese agriculture, the people told SCMP.

Pictures of Ma in Zhejiang’s greenhouses, which are home to Ant and Alibaba, were viralized on Chinese social media.

Alibaba stated the following day it would invest 100 Billion Yuan ($15.5Billion) to promote “common prosperity” and became the latest corporation to publicly support the wealth sharing initiative of President Xi Jinping.