Samsung Electronics today announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire Xealth, a unique healthcare integration platform that brings diverse digital health tools and care programs that benefit patients and providers. Together with Samsung’s innovative leadership in wearable technology, the acquisition will help advance Samsung’s transformation into a connected care platform that bridges wellness and medical care bringing a seamless and holistic approach to preventative care to as many people as possible.

This acquisition will further Samsung’s push to unify fragmented health information and to empower individuals to take control of their own health. Often, customer health data measured on wellness tools, which keep track of one’s wellness journey every day, and clinical records at hospitals are managed separately, leading to missed insights and delayed care. The synergy between Samsung’s advanced wearable technology and Xealth’s digital health platform can create a link between home health monitoring and clinical decision-making through enhancements to Xealth’s platform, with the provider-patient relationship at the center of that effort.

Samsung is committed to making digital health tools accessible for all through relentless innovation in technology and a boundless device ecosystem, and has been heavily investing in sensor technologies on wearables – essential tools to follow one’s wellbeing throughout both day and night. With Samsung’s diverse product portfolio especially around home, Samsung helps connect these various devices to bring better context and personalization around healthcare. The acquisition of Xealth will reinforce this commitment by becoming the cornerstone to advancing Samsung’s care at home vision of connecting and bridging wellness and medical care.

Xealth, spun out of Providence health system, combines multiple digital health solutions into a single user interface and platform, giving healthcare providers a more complete picture of their patients, and enabling real-time monitoring, continuous engagement and smarter decision making. Xealth acts as an orchestration layer that gives health systems control over how they manage, filter, and use data. The company currently has a network of more than 500 U.S. hospitals, including Advocate Health and Banner Health, and more than 70 digital health solution partners, which will gain access to Samsung’s platform and enhance the connected care platform.

“Samsung aims to improve the health of everyone through our extensive platform combining Samsung’s innovative technologies and open collaboration with industry leaders,” said TM Roh, President and Acting Head of the Device eXperience (DX) Division at Samsung Electronics. “We believe the acquisition of Xealth, with its accumulated expertise and extensive healthcare network, will be an anchor to accelerate Samsung’s efforts to support health systems and digital health partners through a truly connected care.”

“We are excited to join forces with Samsung,” added Mike McSherry, CEO, Xealth. “Xealth and Samsung share a common goal to advance the digital health space for truly connected care. Customer health data from wearables can fill in context that is missing to hospitals and bring more data analysis possibilities that were not available just with clinical records. Together with Samsung and our network of healthcare leaders, we will design a bridge between home health monitoring and clinical decision-making, with provider workflow considerations and patient engagement at the core of that effort.”

With Samsung’s capabilities and Xealth’s expertise, more hospitals and solution providers will be part of Samsung’s health ecosystem, which will provide a seamless experience across wellness and medical care and bring hyper-personalized, preventative care to people.

The acquisition is subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions, including receipt of any required regulatory approvals, and is expected to close within 2025.

About Xealth
Xealth is a digital health company that enables health systems to efficiently deploy, integrate, and manage digital health tools for improved patient care. The platform allows providers to prescribe and monitor digital health content, apps, and services as easily as they would medications. Xealth spun out of the Providence health system in 2017, and investors include Advocate Health, Banner Health, Cleveland Clinic, MemorialCare Innovation Fund, Cerner, McKesson Ventures, Novartis, Philips, and ResMed as well as Providence Ventures and the Froedtert and Medical College of Wisconsin Health Network.

Samsung Electronics today announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire all shares of FläktGroup, a leading global HVAC solutions provider, for €1.5 billion from European investment firm Triton. With the global applied HVAC market experiencing rapid growth, the acquisition reinforces Samsung’s commitment to expanding and strengthening its HVAC business.

“Through the acquisition of FläktGroup, an applied HVAC specialist, Samsung Electronics has laid the foundation to become a leader in the global HVAC business, offering a full range of solutions to our customers,” said TM Roh, Acting Head of the Device eXperience (DX) Division at Samsung Electronics. “Our commitment is to continue investing in and developing the high-growth HVAC business as a key future growth engine.”

FläktGroup, based in Herne, Germany, has over a century of accumulated technological expertise and design capabilities, offering diverse products and solutions tailored to each customer. FläktGroup supplies high-reliability and high-efficiency HVAC systems to a wide range of buildings and facilities, including data centers that require stable cooling, museums and libraries managing sensitive historical artifacts, airports and terminals with high foot traffic, and large hospitals where hygiene, temperature and humidity control are critically important.

In the large-scale data center market globally, FläktGroup has secured high customer satisfaction through its product performance, reliability and service support, achieving substantial revenue growth over the past three years. FläktGroup’s data center solutions include its industry-leading liquid cooling and air cooling products, which have enabled customers to reduce energy consumption, contributing to achieving lower carbon footprint goals.

Last year, FläktGroup won the DCS Cooling Innovation of the Year Award at the DCS Cooling Awards, in recognition of its innovative and advanced technologies.

“We are extremely pleased that FläktGroup has become a part of Samsung Electronics. FläktGroup, as a global top-tier HVAC specialist with over a century of expertise, has been relied on by global large clients for its technological and product innovations,” said Trevor Young, CEO of FläktGroup. “Now, with Samsung Electronics’ global business foundation and investment, we expect to further accelerate our growth.”

In addition to data centers, FläktGroup has secured a diverse portfolio of over 60 large customers, including leading pharmaceutical companies, biotech and food and beverage firms, and gigafactories.

Samsung Investing in HVAC Business as Key Growth Engine

The HVAC industry is expected to continue growing with demand for innovative and energy-efficient solutions that improve air quality and control temperature and humidity to provide comfort and safety. Samsung will continue to invest in the HVAC business and has recently made acquisitions and investments across robotics, medical technology and the consumer audio sectors as part of its commitment to expand into new growth businesses.

According to some market research forecasts, the applied HVAC market is projected to grow from $61 billion in 2024 to $99 billion by 2030, at an annual growth rate of 8%, while the data center cooling market is expected to grow at a faster pace at an annual growth rate of 18%. The data center segment in particular has high entry barriers, requiring global supply experience and the ability to present optimal designs and solutions for customers.

In its acquisition of FläktGroup, Samsung anticipates sustained growth in data center demand due to the proliferation of generative AI, robotics, autonomous driving, XR and other technologies.

In addition, Samsung’s building integration control solution (b.IoT) and FläktGroup’s HVAC control solution (FläktEdge) will offer a full suite of HVAC and building energy control systems, through which the company expects an expansion of its service and maintenance business.

Samsung has been expanding its HVAC business with a focus on ductless systems, which supply general and system air conditioners to residential and commercial buildings. In May 2024, Samsung formed a joint venture with Lennox International Inc. to strengthen its position in the North America HVAC market and added Lennox’s distribution channels to the company’s own sales channels.

The transaction is expected to close within 2025.

Samsung Electronics today announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire Oxford Semantic Technologies, a UK startup specializing in knowledge graph technology.

Established in 2017 by three Oxford University professors — Ian Horrocks, Boris Motik and Bernardo Cuenca Grau — Oxford Semantic Technologies holds cutting-edge technological capabilities in the areas of knowledge representation and semantic reasoning. With its AI-centric engine, RDFox®, the company currently collaborates with organizations across Europe and North America involved in the finance, manufacturing and e-commerce sectors.

Knowledge graph technology stores information as an interconnected web of related ideas and process data in a manner similar to how humans acquire, remember, recall and reason over knowledge. By integrating and connecting data, this technology enhances the understanding of how people use a product or service and enables rapid information retrieval and recommendation. As such, it is considered one of the key technologies for realizing more sophisticated and personalized AI solutions.

Knowledge graph technology is challenging to implement due to the complex computations used in the process of converting dynamic and extensive real-world data into knowledge graphs and utilizing them. However, Oxford Semantic Technologies has developed and successfully commercialized knowledge graph technology that optimizes data processing and enables advanced reasoning, in the cloud and on-device.

Samsung Electronics has been collaborating with Oxford Semantic Technologies on various projects since 2018, including investment of Samsung Ventures. With this acquisition, Samsung will secure advanced core engines for personal knowledge graphs. These graphs integrate information and context dispersed across various services and apps, crafting a user experience that is tailor-made by becoming increasingly familiar with users’ preferences and usage.

Combined with on-device AI technology, such as that on Samsung’s Galaxy S24 series, personal knowledge graph technology facilitates hyper-personalized user experiences while ensuring sensitive personal data remains secure on the device. It will be applicable across all of Samsung’s products, extending beyond just mobile devices to televisions and home appliances.

“We are delighted to be working with Samsung,” said Peter Crocker, CEO of Oxford Semantic Technologies. “By integrating Samsung’s expertise in user experience and data with our advanced knowledge graph and reasoning technology, we will provide Samsung’s customers with even more sophisticated personalization. In addition, developing RDFox with Samsung, and being part of the larger group, will provide all of our clients with an even better product, service and support.”

“As global consumers realize their growing need for more personalized AI experiences, the acquisition of Oxford Semantic Technologies will further boost Samsung’s strong capabilities in knowledge engineering,” said Paul Kyungwhoon Cheun, Head of Samsung Research and CTO of Samsung Electronics. “This acquisition is another important step forward as we strive to deliver tailor-made AI experiences built upon our hallmark technological innovation.”

About Oxford Semantic Technologies Ltd.
Oxford Semantic Technologies is a spin out of the University of Oxford by leading academics in the field of knowledge representation and reasoning. With its innovative software RDFox®, the company helps leading companies across many sectors to integrate diverse data sets and apply reasoning across them. Use cases include recommendation engines, product configurators, integration of maps for autonomous vehicles and anomaly detection in financial transactions. For more information, please visit www.oxfordsemantic.tech.

“Today is a historic moment for us. The close of this transaction opens the door to create substantial growth opportunities and deliver greater benefits for customers worldwide,” said Young Sohn, President and Chief Strategy Officer of Samsung Electronics, and Chairman of the Board, HARMAN. “We see transformative opportunities in the car – and a future which seamlessly connects lifestyle across automotive, home, mobile and work. Samsung’s and HARMAN’s leadership in these spaces perfectly positions Samsung to be the preferred partner to our OEM customers. In addition, bringing together HARMAN’s iconic audio brands and capabilities paired with Samsung’s leading display technologies will deliver enhanced audio and video experiences to consumers and professional end markets. And most importantly, we are enthusiastic about our common vision, the similarities in our culture of innovation, and the added value we can create for customers. We look forward to working with all of HARMAN’s employees to execute on our vision.”

“We are excited to have completed the transaction, which provides compelling cash value to our stockholders, benefits our customers and provides new opportunities for our employees,” said Dinesh Paliwal, HARMAN President and CEO.  “Samsung shares our commitment to our customers and our culture of speed, innovation and execution.  Samsung provides HARMAN with the scale, platform and complementary technologies to accelerate growth and extend our global market leadership in automotive, smart audio and connected technologies. Recognizing the importance of partnerships in an increasingly connected world, particularly in automotive, we are poised to leverage our combined teams and resources to produce even greater value for our customers. Working closely with automakers and other technology companies, Samsung and HARMAN will define – and drive – the future of automotive.”

In connection with the completion of the transaction, HARMAN’s common stock will cease trading prior to market open on March 13, 2017 and will be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. HARMAN will operate as a standalone Samsung subsidiary, overseen by a Board of Directors led by Mr. Sohn. Mr. Paliwal will remain CEO of HARMAN, leading the Company with his management team, and will continue to serve as a member of its Board. Samsung is retaining HARMAN’s work force, headquarters and facilities, as well as all of its consumer and professional audio brands.

About HARMAN

HARMAN (harman.com) designs and engineers connected products and solutions for automakers, consumers, and enterprises worldwide, including connected car systems, audio and visual products, enterprise automation solutions; and connected services.  With leading brands including AKG®, Harman Kardon®, Infinity®, JBL®, Lexicon®, Mark Levinson® and Revel®, HARMAN is admired by audiophiles, musicians and the entertainment venues where they perform around the world. More than 25 million automobiles on the road today are equipped with HARMAN audio and connected car systems. The Company’s software services power billions of mobile devices and systems that are connected, integrated and secure across all platforms, from work and home to car and mobile. HARMAN has a workforce of approximately 30,000 people across the Americas, Europe, and Asia.