Samsung Acquires Oxford Semantic for AI-Powered User Interface Innovation

The consumer giant, Samsung, has announced its plans to integrate Oxford Semantic's graph-based reasoning technology with its on-device AI hardware. This strategic move aims to revolutionize personalized user experiences across Samsung's wide range of consumer electronics, spanning from mobile phones to televisions and home appliances.

This decision by Samsung follows closely on the heels of Japan's SoftBank Group's acquisition of Graphcore Ltd., based in Bristol, England. Oxford Semantic, founded in 2017 by three Oxford University professors, has garnered investments from Samsung Ventures and other entities since 2018.

Initially established to commercialize academic research on knowledge representation and semantic reasoning dating back to 2011, Oxford Semantic developed an AI software engine named RDFox. The company has collaborated with various industries, including finance, manufacturing, and e-commerce, to leverage its expertise in knowledge graph technology.

Knowledge graph technology, utilized by Oxford Semantic, organizes information in an interconnected web of related concepts, mimicking the human cognitive process of acquiring, remembering, and recalling knowledge. RDFox has proven instrumental in understanding consumer behavior and preferences, facilitating rapid information retrieval and personalized recommendations.

RDFox's applications range from recommendation engines and product configurators to integrating maps for autonomous vehicles and detecting anomalies in financial transactions. Despite the complexity of implementing knowledge graphs due to the computational burden of converting real-world data into graph structures, Oxford Semantic has devised advanced reasoning methods for both cloud-based and on-device applications.