Samsung signals broader AI partnerships after Perplexity integration

Tae‑Moon "TM" Roh said Samsung is "open to strategic co‑operation" with additional AI groups after a vendor "recently integrated Perplexity as a system‑level agent on it," signaling a shift toward a multi‑partner AI strategy that ties device features to data‑center and chip commitments.

Roh, described in company commentary as Samsung’s consumer device chief and in other accounts as co‑CEO, laid out aggressive goals for embedding AI across the company: "We will apply AI to all products, all functions, and all services as quickly as possible." He added that "awareness jumped to 80%" for Galaxy AI and predicted that "within six months to a year, these technologies will become more widespread."

Those product ambitions sit alongside infrastructure moves announced by Samsung affiliates. A corporate release said Samsung Electronics will work with OpenAI as a strategic memory partner to supply advanced semiconductor solutions for OpenAI’s global Stargate initiative. The release states OpenAI’s memory demand is "projected to reach up to 900,000 DRAM wafers per month," and that Samsung "will contribute toward meeting this need with its extensive lineup of high-performance, energy-efficient DRAM solutions." The same announcement said Samsung SDS has "signed a reseller partnership for OpenAI’s services in Korea" and will support local companies adopting ChatGPT Enterprise. Samsung C&T and Samsung Heavy Industries will collaborate with OpenAI on global AI data centers with a particular focus on the joint development of floating data centers, which the release said can "address land scarcity, lower cooling costs and reduce carbon emissions," while noting their technical complexity has so far limited wider deployment.

On the device side, Roh and company materials set explicit scale targets for third‑party models: Samsung plans to expand Gemini‑powered features and "double coverage from 400 million to 800 million products." The combination of mass device deployment plans and the OpenAI LOI maps a strategy that spans chips, cloud infrastructure and consumer software.

The moves come against a strained memory market. Roh warned that "as this situation is unprecedented, no company is immune to its impact" and that some price impact may be "inevitable" even as Samsung works with partners on longer term plans to cushion the blow. The dual pressure of expanding AI functionality across hundreds of millions of devices and large projected DRAM demand from major AI operators tightens the link between product road maps and semiconductor supply chains.

Samsung has also sought to shape the public conversation around open ecosystems and human‑centered AI. The company staged moderated forums tied to its CES 2026 product showcase that discussed open ecosystems, privacy and design, framing the effort as a deliberate bet on collaboration rather than a solo platform play. Those events underline a coordinated push across public relations, product strategy and infrastructure commitments.

Taken together, the comments and corporate agreements portray Samsung as moving beyond a single‑partner approach to an open, multi‑partner AI posture that pairs device features with significant hardware and data‑center undertakings. The strategy could strengthen Samsung’s position versus rivals in consumer AI, but it also raises new questions about implementation, the exact mapping of partners to products and the impact on chip markets as demand scales.