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Samsung is getting even deeper into Artificial Intelligence (AI). Samsung NEXT, the group helping to transform Samsung by working with entrepreneurs & innovators, today announced the Samsung NEXT Q Fund to “help enable the full potential of AI’s future.”
A press statement by Samsung Next said Q Fund will provide Seed & Series A financing to startups solving AI problems, as well as those using AI to solve computer science problems. Q Fund will enable Samsung NEXT to work closely with innovators, researchers & startups to create “meaningful exposure” to the entire AI stack.
“For the past ten years, we’ve watched software eat the world. Now, it’s AI’s turn to eat software,” said Vincent Tang, Samsung NEXT Ventures. “We’re launching Q Fund to support the next generation of AI startups who look to scratch beyond the surface of what we know today.”
Samsung NEXT is focused on what the world will look like in 5 years & beyond — & helping make that a reality. Aligned with this long term point of view, Samsung NEXT Q Fund represents a departure from how traditional venture capital approaches investments in AI. With Q Fund, Samsung NEXT Ventures will have the flexibility to invest in non-obvious, forward-thinking approaches to AI instead of the applied AI technologies we see in the market today.
Problem spaces Q Fund will examine could include areas such as learning in simulation, scene understanding, intuitive physics, program learning programs, automl, robot control, human computer interaction & meta learning. Q Fund is particularly interested in innovators who apply novel approaches to these challenges, which have historically been immune to conventional techniques.
Samsung NEXT has already made several investments in AI from its Samsung NEXT Fund. From Q Fund specifically, the company recently invested in Covariant.AI, which draws on advances in imitation learning & deep reinforcement learning to teach robots new, complex skills. This investment highlights Q Fund’s focus on startups replacing conventional algorithms, data structures, & general purpose computer programs with learned systems.
The Samsung NEXT team behind Q Fund works closely with world-class researchers to identify cutting-edge approaches to machine learning & perform technical diligence on new opportunities. Advisors include Liangliang Cao (Columbia), Shih-Fu Chang (Columbia), David Duvenaud (Vector Institute), Song Han (MIT), Tim Kraska (MIT), Zach Lipton (Carnegie Mellon), Olga Russakovsky (Princeton), Julian Togelius (NYU), & many others.
