Samsung’s AI Visionary Jumps To Google

The former CTO of Samsung mobile, Injong Rhee, will be joining up with team Google as an entrepreneur-in-residence, according to ZDnet reports.

Rhee has been with Samsung since 2011 and was one of the crucial players in the construction of Knox, the firm’s enterprise security platform. Rhee was also instrumental to the creation of Samsung Pay and to the acquisition of U.S. cloud firm Joyent. At the time, he noted that the new software services were critical to Samsung’s growth. He said new software services made the firm’s “reliance and need for cloud ever-growing.”

In recent years he has also been the head of Samsung mobile’s R&D team 1, which oversaw software and services. He was also one of the driving forces behind the rollout of Bixby after acquiring Viv. Bixby is Samsung’s mobile personal assistant.

Rhee, apart from his official contributions to the bottom line, is also well known for a somewhat eccentric personality within Samsung. Apart from a lot of knowledge about software, media reports also generally mention his very long hair and rather unusual speaking style. His expertise in software saw him quickly promoted to key positions after joining.

He has said he will be focusing on IoT projects in the Google position, though has not offered any specific enumeration as to what that might mean.