Samsung says it needs to ‘redefine’ its voice assistant Bixby with generative AI upgrade

Published

2 years ago

March 31, 2024

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Samsung Electronics Co. Galaxy S24 smartphones during a media preview event in Seoul, South Korea, on Monday, Jan. 15, 2024. Samsung, the world’s most prolific smartphone maker, is leaning into artificial intelligence as the key to unlocking greater sales this year. Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg via Getty Images

SeongJoon Cho | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Samsung could add generative artificial intelligence technology to its voice assistant Bixby, a top executive at the company told CNBC, as the South Korean giant looks to enhance the appeal of its devices.

Bixby launched in 2017 with Samsung’s Galaxy S8 smartphone. The software offered a number of functions, including live translations or restaurant recommendations.

But voice assistants have typically been less conversational and have relied on users asking questions and getting answers.

Chatbots are now more advanced and able to handle much more complex queries, after the emergence of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and its rivals. These new-age chatbots are an example of generative AI, which allows users to prompt with a query and will generate a response in the form of text, a picture, and now even video.

Samsung’s Bixby is across the company’s devices, from smartphones and smartwatches to its appliances. The firm sees it as a key tool for users to control their devices in their home.

So far, Bixby has not had the capabilities of ChatGPT.

Like many smartphone makers, Samsung is looking to infuse its devices with more advanced AI features. The company also launched new features with Galaxy AI, along with its latest S24 series of smartphones. This includes an option that lets users circle something on their screens and search for it on Google, without having to switch apps.

The tech giant is looking to amp up its AI with Bixby.

“So Bixby has been a key voice assistants voice assistant for Samsung not just for the mobile devices, but also for TVs and digital appliances that exist in Samsung’s ecosystem. So it has been the core voice assistant assistant so far,” Won-joon Choi, executive vice president at Samsung’s mobile business, told CNBC in an interview last month.

“With the emergence of generative AI and LLM (large language model) technology, I believe that we have to redefine the role of the Bixby, so that Bixby could be equipped with generative AI and become more smarter in the future,” Choi said, adding this will “enable a more natural conversation and to work out an interface that supports the Samsung products in our ecosystem.”

Choi did not give a timeline when Bixby may get generative AI features, but said that Samsung is “working so hard” to deliver them.

Samsung’s focus on the technology comes at a time when investors are scrutinizing what Apple will deliver when it comes to generative AI. Apple announced it would hold its annual developers conference, WWDC, in June, when the company is largely expected to talk up some AI features across its products.

Technology

Okta shares fall as company declines to give guidance for next fiscal year

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2 hours ago

December 2, 2025

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Okta shares fall as company declines to give guidance for next fiscal year

Cheng Xin | Getty Images

Okta on Tuesday topped Wall Street’s third-quarter estimates and issued an upbeat outlook, but shares fell as the company did not provide guidance for fiscal 2027.

Shares of the identity management provider fell more than 3% in after-hours trading on Tuesday.

Here’s how the company did versus LSEG estimates:

Earnings per share: 82 cents adjusted vs. 76 cents expected
Revenue: $742 million vs. $730 million expected

Compared to previous third-quarter reports, Okta refrained from offering preliminary guidance for the upcoming fiscal year. Finance chief Brett Tighe cited seasonality in the fourth quarter, and said providing guidance would require “some conservatism.”

Okta released a capability that allows businesses to build AI agents and automate tasks during the third quarter.

CEO Todd McKinnon told CNBC that upside from AI agents haven’t been fully baked into results and could exceed Okta’s core total addressable market over the next five years.

“It’s not in the results yet, but we’re investing, and we’re capitalizing on the opportunity like it will be a big part of the future,” he said in a Tuesday interview.

Revenues increased almost 12% from $665 million in the year-ago period. Net income increased 169% to $43 million, or 24 cents per share, from $16 million, or breakeven, a year ago. Subscription revenues grew 11% to $724 million, ahead of a $715 million estimate.

For the current quarter, the cybersecurity company expects revenues between $748 million and $750 million and adjusted earnings of 84 cents to 85 cents per share. Analysts forecast $738 million in revenues and EPS of 84 cents for the fourth quarter.

Returning performance obligations, or the company’s subscription backlog, rose 17% from a year ago to $4.29 billion and surpassed a $4.17 billion estimate from StreetAccount.

This year has been a blockbuster period for cybersecurity companies, with major acquisition deals from the likes of Palo Alto Networks and Google and a raft of new initial public offerings from the sector.

Okta shares have gained about 4% this year.

WATCH: Earnings will drive small cap outperformance, says Bank of America’s Jill Carey Hall

Technology

Marvell to acquire Celestial AI for as much as $5.5 billion

Published

3 hours ago

December 2, 2025

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Marvell to acquire Celestial AI for as much as .5 billion

Marvell Technology Group Ltd. headquarters in Santa Clara, California, on Sept. 6, 2024.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Semiconductor company Marvell on Tuesday announced that it will acquire Celestial AI for at least $3.25 billion in cash and stock.

The purchase price could increase to $5.5 billion if Celestial hits revenue milestones, Marvell said.

Marvell shares rose 13% in extended trading Tuesday as the company reported third-quarter earnings that beat expectations and said on the earnings call that it expected data center revenue to rise 25% next year.

The deal is an aggressive move for Marvell to acquire complimentary technology to its semiconductor networking business. The addition of Celestial could enable Marvell to sell more chips and parts to companies that are currently committing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on infrastructure for AI.

Marvell stock is down 18% so far in 2025 even as semiconductor rivals like Broadcom have seen big valuation increases driven by excitement around artificial intelligence.

Celestial is a startup focused on developing optical interconnect hardware, which it calls a “photonic fabric,” to connect high-performance computers. Celestial was reportedly valued at $2.5 billion in March in a funding round, and Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan joined the startup’s board in January.

Optical connections are becoming increasingly important because the most advanced AI systems need those parts tie together dozens or hundreds of chips so they can work as one to train and run the biggest large-language models.

Currently, many AI chip connections are done using copper wires, but newer systems are increasingly using optical connections because they can transfer more data faster and enable physically longer cables. Optical connections also cost more.

“This builds on our technology leadership, broadens our addressable market in scale-up connectivity, and accelerates our roadmap to deliver the industry’s most complete connectivity platform for AI and cloud customers,” Marvell CEO Matt Murphy said in a statement.

Marvell said that the first application of Celestial technology would be to connect a system based on “large XPUs,” which are custom AI chips usually made by the companies investing billions in AI infrastructure.

On Tuesday, the company said that it could even integrate Celestial’s optical technology into custom chips, and based on customer traction, the startup’s technology would soon be integrated into custom AI chips and related parts called switches.

Amazon Web Services Vice President Dave Brown said in a statement that Marvell’s acquisition of Celestial will “help further accelerate optical scale-up innovation for next-generation AI deployments.”

The maximum payout for the deal will be triggered if Celestial can record $2 billion in cumulative revenue by the end of fiscal 2029. The deal is expected to close early next year.

In its third-quarter earnings on Tuesday, Marvell earnings of 76 cents per share on $2.08 billion in sales, versus LSEG expectations of 73 cents on $2.07 billion in sales. Marvell said that it expects fourth-quarter revenue to be $2.2 billion, slightly higher than LSEG’s forecast of $2.18 billion.

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