A new report from Bloomberg suggests that Samsung could soon find a new service to preload its smartphones with. Though the South Korean company has been tightly coddled with Google’s Gemini AI for some time, something that started around the same time as the search giant helped to revamp the Galaxy Watch’s operating system, that may change.
The information comes by way of Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman, who has an excellent track record when it comes to revealing industry details early. The move would see Samsung deemphasise Google’s services on its phones and possibly would lead to other AI services appearing on the handsets.
Samsung’s perplexing choice
At this point, the two companies involved are said to be in talks, which is newspeak for ‘nothing is official yet’. But the status of those talks is quite detailed. Samsung will invest in Perplexity AI, contributing cash to the AI company while also integrating its functions into the Galaxy phone ecosystem.
This would take the shape of Perplexity’s search functions in the Samsung web browser, while digital assistant Bixby could also see a digital upgrade via the deal.
An announcement could be made as soon as this year, with the first Perplexity-laden phone arriving early next year. That’s the Galaxy S26 and its many variants, for those keeping track. Both companies declined to comment on the deal, suggesting that Gurman’s information is more correct than anyone would like it to be.
Whether the deal will affect Samsung’s Gemini integration or its own work on AI isn’t known. We’d speculate that basic Android functions like Circle to Search and Google Lens would remain in place, while Samsung’s apps with working AI may stick with what they’re doing. The Perplexity deal seems likely to affect relatively untouched (Bixby) or sketchy (browser search) AI implementations. Perhaps we can expect a broadly-sourced range of AI functions from the South Korean company soon.
