Samsung wants to build robots that know when you’re sad—and maybe even care.
As part of a push to tap into a $466 billion market spanning AI, robotics, 6G and digital health care, the South Korean tech giant is turning to some of the world’s top universities, hoping the next tech revolution begins in a lab. Through its new Strategic Alliance for Research and Technology—START for short—Samsung Research America (SRA) is launching 12 research collaborations with elite institutions like MIT, Stanford and the University of Toronto.
The projects sound like something out of science fiction: Robots that read facial expressions and body language, respond to those cues, and wearable devices that can detect asymptomatic diseases in real time. Other project areas include augmented reality, multimedia, camera tech, security, medical technology, big data and emerging technologies.
Earlier this year, Samsung invited top-tier schools to submit proposals. It plans to announce the winning partners in June, with full-scale research kicking off shortly afterward.
Samsung will provide up to $150,000 per project per year, renewable for an additional year based on results.
“As part of SRA’s expanding efforts to strengthen industry-academic partnerships, this program enables researchers to work with our R&D teams on early-stage innovations that will shape the future of Samsung devices and experiences,” the company said. “Our program is dedicated to identifying emerging, frontier technologies fostering solutions that enhance products, services, and user experiences across Samsung’s Device eXperience (DX) division. We are looking for game-changing innovations that will impact our entire product portfolio in mobile technology, visual display, digital appliances, and networking.”
This kind of corporate-academic partnership is fast becoming a cornerstone of innovation strategy among major tech players. Rather than going it alone, companies like Samsung are increasingly tapping into the intellectual firepower of university labs to speed up breakthroughs.
Amazon Science, for example, partners with numerous colleges and universities with a focus on research. In 2020, the company teamed up with Columbia University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) to launch the Center for AI Technology (CAIT).
“The center is a collaborative effort between Columbia and Amazon with a mission to better society through the development and adoption of advanced AI technology, contributing to a more secure, connected, creative, sustainable, healthy and equitable humanity,” the university states.
Earlier this year, CAIT issued a call for research proposals, inviting submissions from across Columbia, including all SEAS departments and faculty in other disciplines. Selected projects are set to begin in summer or fall 2025. CAIT is funding up to five projects, each with a $100,000 award. Research areas include generative AI applications, inference-time computation, and hardware-software co-design for AI at scale.
Google is also enlisting partnerships with colleges and universities. It partnered with the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom to help launch the Centre for Human-Inspired Artificial Intelligence (CHIA).
“The centre brings together an interdisciplinary community of researchers to investigate the innovative ways in which human and machine intelligence can be combined to yield AI that contributes to social and global progress,” CHIA says. “Designed to deliver both academic and real-world impact, the centre seeks to partner with academic, industrial, and other organizations that share an interest in human-inspired AI.”
In March 2025, the Association of American Universities and several other institutions announced a partnership with OpenAI to explore new AI applications. Harvard, Duke and Ohio State are among the institutions involved.
“Today, we’re launching NextGenAI, a first-of-its-kind consortium with 15 leading research institutions dedicated to using AI to accelerate research breakthroughs and transform education,” OpenAI said in a press release. “AI has the power to drive progress in research and education—but only when people have the right tools to harness it. That’s why OpenAI is committing $50 million in research grants, compute funding, and API access to support students, educators, and researchers advancing the frontiers of knowledge.”
“The field of AI wouldn’t be where it is today without decades of work in the academic community,” said Brad Lightcap, OpenAI’s chief operating officer. “Continued collaboration is essential to build AI that benefits everyone. NextGenAI will accelerate research progress and catalyze a new generation of institutions equipped to harness the transformative power of AI.”
