Samsung Electronics is in talks with AI start-up Perplexity that could potentially see the South Korean company give Perplexity’s tools a prominent position in its devices, Bloomberg reported.

The talks involve preloading Perplexity’s app and assistant in upcoming Samsung devices and integrating its search features into Samsung’s web browser, the report said, citing unnamed sources.

The companies have also reportedly discussed adding Perplexity’s technology into Samsung’s Bixby assistant.

Smartphone integration

A deal could be announced as early as this year with the goal of including Perplexity as a default assistant option in the Galaxy S26 smartphone range that is expected to launch in the first half of next year.

Samsung is also expected to be one of the biggest investors in an upcoming round of funding.

Perplexity is reportedly in advanced discussions to raise $500 million (£370m) at a $14bn valuation.

The companies reportedly engaged in talks earlier this year with the two sides meeting in South Korea, but to date have not made a public announcement.

Separately from the talks to build Perplexity into Samsung’s devices, the companies have discussed building an AI-oriented operating system and an app for AI agents that could use tools from Perplexity and other AI companies, the Bloomberg report said.

AI search

The talks come soon after a deal was announced to integrate Perplexity’s AI tools into Motorola devices and would be Perplexity’s biggest partnership to date.

For Samsung, such an arrangement could help it reduce its dependence on Google and give it access to a mix of technologies, similar to Apple’s AI approach.

Apple is currently using offerings from Microsoft-backed OpenAI as part of Apple Intelligence but has publicly expressed interest in working with Perplexity.

It is unclear how a deal with Samsung, one of Apple’s biggest competitors, could affect such plans.

Perplexity, which offers AI-based search, is one of a handful of AI start-ups that have gained momentum during the AI boom of the past two years.

A recent Reuters report said that Anthropic, another AI start-up, had quickly jumped from a $1bn to a $3bn annual revenue run rate over the course of this year, partly due to enthusiasm from businesses looking to use its tools to offer coding services.

Traffic on Anthropic’s consumer-oriented chatbot Claude is far below that of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, but the company has seen strong business demand for use cases including code generation, the report said, in an apparent early validation of the use of AI in business environments.

Business model questions

Meanwhile, in a new study of the AI industry, well-known tech analyst Mary Meeker highlighted questions around the business models of the major US AI companies, warning that they risk being commodified.

The study highlighted the challenges AI start-ups face in finding revenue sources that are commensurate with their vast expenditures.

Meeker’s firm Bond Capital noted that AI start-ups require vast amounts of venture-capital funding to train and operate their extremely energy-hungry models, but competitors are emerging in China and elsewhere that could offer comparable features for a far lower price.

“In the short term, it’s hard to ignore that the economics of general-purpose LLMs look like commodity businesses with venture-scale burn,” the study said.