'A culture that doesn't trust': Samsung's AI leaders are quitting one by one

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'A culture that doesn't trust': Samsung's AI leaders are quitting one by one

Published: 11 Mar. 2025, 15:58 Updated: 11 Mar. 2025, 23:38

JIN EUN-SOO
[email protected]

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

Samsung Electronics' Seocho office in Gangnam District, southern Seoul [YONHAP]

Samsung Electronics may be good at making smartphones, but what it is not good at is retaining talent to spearhead innovation at the company.

The Korean electronics giant has lost talent in AI, big data and robotics, including Harvard Prof. Wei Gu-yeon, former Amazon senior researcher Jang Woo-seung and former Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) researcher Kang Sung-chul, all of whom were recruited in 2019 to lead technology innovation at the company.

Wei, who was appointed as a fellow at the AI research center, left the company last year. Jang and Kang, who were supposed to lead big data and robotics research, also resigned at the end of last year.

The consecutive departures of hard-earned talents have reignited criticism of Samsung Electronics' working environment where engineers cannot solely focus on their research.

In 2019, Samsung Electronics recruited Wei as a fellow, a top-tier position within Samsung Electronics' research unit, in an aim to bolster its AI. Wei was the first to earn fellow status as external talent. Wei lead the AI neural processing team at Samsung Research.

At the beginning of last year, however, Wei parted with Samsung Research and began to work as an “academic partner” for Nvidia, researching Very Large Scale Integration. Key members of Wei's team at Samsung also are not there any more, but are working for Naver and Meta's AI processors.

Jang led the Big Data Center at Samsung Electronics, a unit that had been directly under the CEO but was moved under the global market team of the Device eXperience division last year. At a similar time, Jang resigned.

From left, Wei Gu-yeon, Jang Woo-seung and Kang Sung-chul [SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS]

Jang was an expert in machine learning research at Amazon before joining Samsung in 2019. He was appointed the head of Big Data Center, which was established in 2022, and launched the DX digital platform, where employees can easily find data that is scattered across its database.

Kang, the so-called robot expert, also resigned last year. Jang and Kang will serve as advisers to Samsung Electronics for some time.

Samsung Electronics has been keen on recruiting big shots from the tech world but is having hard time retaining them. Leaving after three or four years has been a repetitive routine for new talent.

“While Samsung Electronics emphasizes technology a lot, it is a company where you have to think about so much more than just technology,” said a former executive at Samsung Electronics.

“A culture that doesn't trust and wait” is another problem at Samsung, according to eight former executives at Samsung Electronics who were responsible for research and were recruited from external companies.

“An absence of comprehensive decision-making that goes beyond just one individual division” was also pointed out.

“Every company has a division that makes money and a division that's responsible for advanced research,” said another former executive at Samsung Electronics that worked at the company in early 2020s. “But the problem at Samsung is the speed at which a final decision is made.”

Going “hybrid” is an inevitable choice for businesses with the explosive emergence of AI, and thus, recruiting external talent is quintessential.

Microsoft, for example, ditched its proprietary AI model in 2022 to invest heavily in OpenAI's ChatGPT to become a global leader in AI. Google bypassed internal talent to appoint Demis Hassabis, CEO and co-founder of DeepMind, to lead the company's AI system research.

Samsung Electronics, on the other hand, is seemingly slow to adapt such an open-minded approach, although it has been showing improvement recently. It appointed Jun Young-hyun, a former researcher at LG Semiconductor, to lead its chip division and promoted Choi Won-joon from Qualcomm to president of its Mobile eXperience Division.

BY SHIM SEO-HYUN [[email protected]]