Seoul, January 5, 2026
Samsung Electronics is going all-in on AI this year. The company's co-CEO TM Roh recently told reporters that Samsung plans to double the number of mobile devices running Google-powered "Galaxy AI" features to around 800 million by the end of 2026.
Just last year, the South Korean giant managed to roll out these Gemini-backed AI capabilities to about 400 million smartphones and tablets. That already felt like a big step, but apparently they're not slowing down. The push covers everything from flagship Galaxy phones to more affordable models, and it's part of Samsung's bigger strategy to make AI a standard part of everyday devices - not just a fancy add-on for premium buyers.
The announcement came during conversations around CES 2026, where Samsung is also talking about bringing similar AI smarts to TVs, home appliances, and more. Roh emphasized that the company wants to weave AI into "all products, all functions, and all services" as quickly as possible.
This massive scale-up is great news for Google. With Samsung being the biggest Android phone maker by far, getting Gemini into the pockets of hundreds of millions more users gives Google's AI a huge advantage in the ongoing race against rivals like OpenAI.
Speaking of which, Google's latest Gemini 3 model - launched back in November - has been turning heads. It topped several key performance charts for things like reasoning, math, and overall smarts. The release reportedly shook things up at OpenAI so much that CEO Sam Altman sent out an internal "code red" memo, basically putting non-essential projects on hold and redirecting teams to speed up work on the next version of ChatGPT.
For Samsung, the timing couldn't be better. After losing the global smartphone crown to Apple last year and feeling pressure from Chinese brands, leaning hard into Google's AI ecosystem looks like a smart way to stay relevant and give users more reasons to pick Galaxy devices.
Whether they actually hit that 800 million target remains to be seen - supply chain issues and memory chip shortages are already making things tricky - but the ambition is clear: 2026 is shaping up to be the year AI really goes mainstream on phones.
