Samsung seems to be keen on strengthening its hold over AI voice recognition services. The South Korean giant, with other investors including US chipmaker Nvidia, has invested a whopping $75 million in SoundHound, a US-based AI voice recognition company. Other partners include Global Catalyst Partners, Walden Venture Capital, and Nomura Group.
The investment from the company side has been made through the Samsung Catalyst Fund, which is under Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center (SSIC) located in California. Individual Samsung investment, however, has not been disclosed.
This is not the first foray into the AI platform by Samsung. In October last year, the company acquired US AI developer Viv Labs followed by acquisition of Harman in November. Harman is an infotainment system developer. It hit the spotlight this year with the unveiling of its autonomous driving system at the CES 2016 held in Las Vegas in Jan.
Now, there are speculations that SoundHound, which operates an interactive voice recognition platform ‘Houndify’ system, is also eyeing to delve deeper in the autonomous vehicle parts segment.
Thus, the only logic conferred from Samsung’s interest in SoundHound can be to use Houndify voice recognition system in electronics products for autonomous vehicles in the future. The company is already on-board with the reported release of its own AI assistant ‘Bixby‘ with the upcoming Galaxy S8.
