Tools & Platforms
Industry Leaders Chart the Future of Mobile Innovation at Galaxy Tech Forum – Samsung Global Newsroom
At Galaxy Unpacked 2025 on July 9, Samsung Electronics unveiled its latest Galaxy Z series devices and wearables — pushing the boundaries of foldable design and connected wellness experiences. These innovations mark the next step in the company’s mission to deliver meaningful, user-centered technology, with Galaxy AI and digital health emerging as key pillars of the journey ahead.
To explore these themes further, Samsung hosted two panels at the Galaxy Tech Forum on July 10 in Brooklyn. Samsung Newsroom joined industry leaders and executives to examine how ambient intelligence and advanced health technologies are shaping the future of mobile innovation.
(Panel One) The Next Vision of AI: Ambient Intelligence
▲ (From left) Moderator Sabrina Ortiz, Jisun Park, Mindy Brooks and Dr. Vinesh Sukumar
The first panel, “The Next Vision of AI: Ambient Intelligence,” explored how multimodal capabilities are enabling the continued evolution of AI in everyday life — blending into user interactions in ways that feel intuitive, proactive and nearly invisible. Panelists discussed the smartphone’s evolving role, the importance of platform integration and the power of cross-industry collaboration to deliver secure, personalized intelligence at scale.
Jisun Park, Corporate Executive Vice President and Head of Language AI Team, Mobile eXperience (MX) Business at Samsung Electronics, opened the conversation by reflecting on Galaxy AI’s rapid adoption. Since the launch of the Galaxy S25 series in January, more than 70% of users have engaged with Galaxy AI features. He then turned the discussion to the next frontier, ambient intelligence — AI that is deeply personal, predictive and ever-present.
▲ Jisun Park from Samsung Electronics
Samsung sees ambient intelligence as AI that is so seamlessly integrated into daily life it becomes second nature. The company is committed to democratizing Galaxy AI to 400 million devices by the end of 2025.
This vision builds on insights from a yearlong collaboration with London-based research firm Symmetry, which revealed that 60% of users want their phones to anticipate needs without prompts — based on daily habits.
“Some see AI as the start of a ‘post-smartphone’ era, but we see it differently,” said Park. “We’re building a future where your devices don’t just respond — they become smarter to anticipate, see and work quietly in the background to make life feel a little more effortless.”
Mindy Brooks, Vice President of Android Consumer Product and Experience at Google, discussed how multimodal AI is moving beyond reactive response to deeper understanding of user intent across inputs like text, vision and voice. Google’s Gemini is designed to be intelligently aware and anticipatory — tuned to individual preferences and routines for assistance that feels natural.
▲ Mindy Brooks from Google
“Through close collaboration with Samsung, Gemini works seamlessly across its devices and connects with first-party apps to provide helpful and personalized responses,” she said.
Dr. Vinesh Sukumar, Vice President of Product Management at Qualcomm Technologies emphasized that as AI becomes more personalized, there is more information than ever that needs to be protected.
“For us, privacy, performance and personalization go hand in hand — they’re not competing priorities but co-equal standards,” he said.
▲ Dr. Vinesh Sukumar from Qualcomm Technologies
Both Brooks and Dr. Sukumar reinforced the importance of tight integration across platforms and hardware.
“Our work with Samsung prioritizes secure, on-device intelligence so that users know where their data is and who controls it,” said Dr. Sukumar.
▲ The AI panel at Galaxy Tech Forum
Moderator Sabrina Ortiz, senior editor at ZDNET, closed the session with a discussion on AI privacy. Panelists agreed that trust, transparency and user control must underpin the entire AI experience.
“When it comes to building more agentic AI, our priority is to ensure we’re fostering smarter, more personalized and more meaningful assistance across our device ecosystem,” said Brooks.
(Panel Two) The Next Chapter of Health: Scaling Prevention and Connected Care
The second panel, “The Next Chapter of Health: Scaling Prevention and Connected Care,” focused on how technology can bridge the gap between wellness and clinical care — making health insights more connected, proactive and usable for individuals, healthcare providers and digital health solution partners. Panelists explored how the convergence of clinical data, at-home monitoring and AI is reshaping the modern healthcare experience.
▲ (From left) Moderator Dr. Hon Pak, Mike McSherry, Dr. Rasu Shrestha and Jim Pursley
Health data is often siloed across systems, resulting in inefficiencies and gaps in care. Combined with rising rates of chronic illness, an aging population and ongoing clinician shortages, the result is a system under pressure to deliver timely, effective care.
▲ Dr. Hon Pak from Samsung Electronics
“Patients and consumers around the world are asking us to hear them, to know them, to truly understand them,” said moderator Dr. Hon Pak, Senior Vice President and Head of Digital Health Team at Samsung Electronics. “And I believe this is the opportunity we have with Samsung, Xealth and partners like Hinge and Advocate. Together, we are creating a connected ecosystem where healthcare can truly make a difference — not just in the life of a patient, but in the life of a person.”
Samsung is addressing this challenge through technological innovation and its recent acquisition of Xealth, a leading digital health platform with a network of more than 500 hospitals and 70 digital health solution providers. Through Xealth, Samsung plans to connect wearable data and insights from Samsung Health into clinical workflows — delivering a more unified and seamless healthcare experience.
▲ Mike McSherry from Xealth
“This [phone], plus your devices — the watch, the ring — are going to replace the standalone blood pressure monitor, the pulse oximeter, a variety of different devices,” said Mike McSherry, founder and CEO of Xealth. “It’s going to be one packaged solution, and that’s going to simplify care.”
This collaboration is designed to empower hospitals with real-time insights and help prevent chronic conditions through early detection and continuous monitoring with wearable devices.
▲ Dr. Rasu Shrestha from Advocate Health
“The reality is that with all of the challenges that exist in healthcare, it is not any one entity that can heroically go in and save healthcare. It really takes an ecosystem,” said Dr. Rasu Shrestha, Executive Vice President and Chief Innovation & Commercialization Officer at Advocate Health. “That’s part of the reason why I’m so excited about Xealth and Samsung — and partners like us — really coming together to solve for this challenge. Because it is about Samsung enabling it. It’s more of an open ecosystem, a curated ecosystem.”
The panel spotlighted the growing shift from hospital-based care to care at home — and the opportunities enabled by Samsung’s expanding ecosystem of connected devices. Data from wearables, including those equipped with Samsung’s BioActive Sensor technology, can provide high-quality input for AI-driven insights.
Paired with Samsung’s SmartThings connectivity and wide portfolio of smart home devices, the company is uniquely positioned to support remote health monitoring and treatment from home.
AI is expected to play a role in reducing clinician workload by streamlining administrative tasks and surfacing the most relevant insights at the right time. Platforms like Xealth offer users a personalized, friendly interface to access necessary information from one place for a more connected healthcare experience.
▲ The health panel at Galaxy Tech Forum
Across both sessions, one theme was clear — realizing the potential of ambient intelligence and scaling prevention and connected care requires deep, cross-industry collaboration.
From on-device privacy solutions like Knox Matrix to expanded integration across Galaxy devices, Samsung and its partners are building an ecosystem that’s not only intelligent but simple, secure and future-ready.
Tools & Platforms
Tech Philosophy and AI Strategy – Stratechery by Ben Thompson
Welcome back to This Week in Stratechery!
As a reminder, each week, every Friday, we’re sending out this overview of content in the Stratechery bundle; highlighted links are free for everyone. Additionally, you have complete control over what we send to you. If you don’t want to receive This Week in Stratechery emails (there is no podcast), please uncheck the box in your delivery settings.
On that note, here were a few of our favorites this week.
- Who Invests and Why? As Mark Zuckerberg and Meta inflame the already raging talent wars, I wanted to explore if there was a way to understand who was willing to invest to win, and who was not. I came up with two scales: how big is the business opportunity for a given company, and whether or not that company’s philosophy is about helping users, or doing things for them. Not only does this intersection of Tech Philosophy and AI Opportunity explain the actions of Meta and Apple, it also helped me fully rectify some of my long-standing confusion about Google. — Ben Thompson
- Apple Searches for an AI Partner. If Apple isn’t going to pay for AI talent, then they need a partner, which is why Apple is considering a partnership with either Anthropic or OpenAI to power a new version of Siri. For one, thinking about what OpenAI and Anthropic would want from a deal with Apple provides a window into the goals distinguishing two of the leading AI labs in the world. As for Apple, the news highlights the corner that they’ve backed themselves into after several years of failed AI efforts internally and one prolonged and very public failure with last year’s Apple Intelligence rollout. The choices now? Either surrender control and branding to OpenAI, or pay big money to Anthropic (a far cry from collecting $20 billion a year from Google for default search placement). In either case, Apple management will have to leave its comfort zone, and looking at the past few years, perhaps that comfort zone was the problem. — Andrew Sharp
- Is Xi Jinping on His Way Out? Every week I survey the news to prep for Sharp China, and for about two months now, there’s been a steady thrum of rumors concerning the political fate of Xi Jinping. Connecting the dots between Xi’s unexplained absences from public view, a spate of dismissals of powerful generals from the People’s Liberation Army, and a surprise absence at the BRICS summit in Brazil a few weeks ago, various internet sleuths and commentators are wondering whether Xi’s long-unshakeable hold on power may be waning. For the second half of this week’s episode, Sinocism’s Bill Bishop, who’s been studying the CCP for 30 years, explained why he finds the public evidence unconvincing and the rumor ecosystem increasingly frustrating. It was a rollicking conversation, and one that I caveated with my own note: what’s most remarkable to me about this rumor cycle is that because of the CCP’s unbelievable opacity, there is a hard limit on what any expert can conclusively say about the future of anyone in power—even the big man, himself. — AS
Stratechery Articles and Updates
Dithering with Ben Thompson and Daring Fireball’s John Gruber
Asianometry with Jon Yu
Sharp China with Andrew Sharp and Sinocism’s Bill Bishop
Greatest of All Talk with Andrew Sharp and WaPo’s Ben Golliver
Sharp Tech with Andrew Sharp and Ben Thompson
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Tools & Platforms
Intel spins out AI robotics company RealSense with $50 million raise
Brian Krzanich, chief executive officer of Intel Corp., right, shows the collision avoidance feature of an AscTec Firefly drone with Intel RealSense cameras during the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Patrick T. Fallon | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Intel is spinning out its artificial intelligence robotics and biometric venture as more companies bet big on automation tools.
The new company, known as RealSense, was announced Friday and comes alongside a $50-million Series A funding round that includes MediaTek Innovation Fund and Intel Capital, the chipmaker’s venture arm that it is also spinning out.
RealSense, which makes the tools and technology for robotics automation, said it plans to use the funding to develop new product lines and meet growing demand worldwide. Nadav Orbach, Intel’s current vice president and general manager for incubation and disruptive innovation, will serve as CEO.
“The timing is now for physical AI,” as the technology gains more use cases and traction, Orbach told CNBC in an interview. “We want to develop new product lines. We see the demand and we see the need, and with where it’s at right now, the right thing for us was to raise external funds.”
Companies across the globe have ramped up investment in the burgeoning robotics space as AI use cases expand.
Morgan Stanley expects the market for humanoid robots to hit $5 trillion by 2050 as tech companies, including Tesla and Amazon, bet big on the technology and automation.
Elsewhere, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang called robotics the biggest opportunity for the chipmaker after AI, and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff last month claimed AI is handling 30% to 50% of the software vendor’s work.
Intel has undergone a series of cost-cutting plans after the worst year for its stock in decades.
The company axed CEO Pat Gelsinger and cut jobs last year as it struggled to keep up with AI competition. In April, the company said it would sell a majority of its stake in chip subsidiary Altera.
RealSense, formerly known as Intel Perceptual Computing, was created more than a decade ago to investigate 3D vision technology and launched its first product in 2015. The company employs about 130 people across the U.S., Israel and China and caters to autonomous robot manufacturers such as Eyesynth and Unitree Robotics.
Orbach said RealSense is focused on bringing more safety tools to the industry and easy-to-use technology for its customers. Intel will maintain a minority stake in the company.
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