Samsung hired an Apple executive to head a new R&D unit in the US focused on AI after the company merged two facilities in North America, Bloomberg reported.

The company’s North America AI Centre will combine the R&D teams from units in Mountain View, California, and Toronto, Canada, and will be led by Murat Akbacak. His LinkedIn profile indicates he is head of contextual and conversational AI for Siri (Apple’s AI assistant). Before joining Apple in 2015, he worked at Microsoft as an engineering manager.

Samsung is increasing its hiring in the US after securing $4.6 billion in direct funding as part of the US CHIPS and Science Act to expand its semiconductor manufacturing capabilities in Texas.

Meanwhile in a LinkedIn post, Kyung Kye-hyun, previously head of the chip division and now head of the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, wrote the company is setting up a specialised research lab jointly operating in Silicon Valley and South Korea to drive development of artificial general intelligence (AGI), and has started recruitment efforts. 

He noted the Samsung Semiconductor AGI Computing Lab will first look to develop chips for large language models, with a focus on inference and service applications.