At CES 2026, Samsung co-CEO TM Roh announced plans to double the number of Gemini AI-equipped devices from 400 million in 2025 to 800 million by the end of 2026 – the most ambitious consumer AI deployment plan ever announced by a hardware manufacturer. 1)
If Samsung hits this target, roughly one in ten people on Earth will be carrying a Samsung device with Gemini AI capabilities by year-end 2026.
The key strategic pivot is extending Gemini AI from premium flagships to mid-tier and budget devices. In 2025, Galaxy AI features powered by Gemini were largely limited to the Galaxy S25 series and high-end foldables. The 800 million target is only achievable by pushing these capabilities into the Galaxy A-series phones, tablets, TVs, and Bespoke home appliances. 2)
Samsung framed its CES 2026 presence around the theme “Your Companion to AI Living,” positioning AI as the foundation connecting R&D, product development, operations, and user experience across the entire Samsung ecosystem. 3)
“Samsung is building a more unified, more personal experience across mobile, visual display, home appliances and services,” said CEO TM Roh. “With our global connected ecosystem, and by embedding AI across categories, Samsung is leading the way to offer more meaningful everyday AI experiences.” 4)
Galaxy AI is Samsung's umbrella brand for its suite of AI features, largely powered by Google's Gemini model. The division of labor between Samsung and Google works as follows: 5)
The technical foundation relies on Samsung's shift to a “Local-First” hybrid AI model. The 2026 rollout is built on 2nm silicon and Gemini 3 integration, enabling on-device AI processing for privacy-sensitive tasks while offloading complex reasoning to cloud services. 6)
The rollout extends beyond smartphones to encompass:
The 800 million figure is not primarily a product story – it is a distribution story. Eight hundred million devices is more than twice the total number of iPhones Apple sold in all of 2025. Samsung is betting that a unified, cross-category AI ecosystem will be the primary driver of consumer loyalty for the next decade. 7)
“We will apply AI to all products, all functions, and all services as quickly as possible,” said TM Roh. 8)