Samsung hires Stanford AI scholar to lead its AI development in North America

TL;DR

Samsung appointed Stanford AI scholar Juan Carlos Niebles to lead its North America AI Center as executive vice president.

The company is shifting focus from software agents like Bixby toward physical AI in robots, manufacturing, and wearables.

Samsung is also expanding partnerships with Nvidia and Google to embed AI into more of its products.

Samsung is accelerating its AI development to bring advanced capabilities across its devices and business operations. To lead these efforts on multiple fronts, the tech giant has hired Juan Carlos Niebles, an AI scholar from Stanford University who previously directed AI research at Salesforce and the Stanford-Toyota AI research center.

Appointed as head of Samsung Research's North America AI Center at the executive vice president level, Niebles brings extensive expertise in computer vision, multimodal AI systems, and robotics controls. He has published more than 100 papers on the matter in leading academic journals.

He succeeds Murat Akbacak, who founded the North America AI Center in 2024 after serving as the chief of Apple's Siri AI assistant. Niebles is expected to leverage his academic and industry network to expand large-scale partnerships throughout North America.

In terms of strategy, Samsung is shifting from software-based AI agents like Bixby toward physical AI. The company aims to integrate AI into physical products, including humanoid robots, manufacturing operations, and wearable devices such as earbuds, smart glasses, and smartwatches.

Additionally, Samsung established a dedicated Robotics Business Team in South Korea led by Chief Technology Officer Yoon Jang-hyun, which reports directly to Samsung Electronics Co-CEO TM Roh.

Beyond internal restructuring, Samsung is deepening its external partnerships. It is expanding its collaboration with Nvidia to move beyond high-bandwidth memory chips and partnering more closely with Google to integrate Gemini into products like refrigerators, smart glasses, and extended reality (XR) headsets.

Asif Iqbal Shaik - Senior Editor

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First Samsung device: T100

Asif is a computer engineer turned technology journalist. He has been using Samsung phones since 2004, and his current smartphone is the Galaxy S23 Ultra. He loves headphones, mechanical keyboards, and PC hardware. When not writing about technology, he likes watching crime and science fiction movies and TV shows.

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