Oxford Semantic Technologies to be acquired by Samsung Electronics

Oxford, UK – 16 July 2024 – Oxford Science Enterprises (OSE) today announces its Deep Tech portfolio company, Oxford Semantic Technologies, has signed an agreement to be acquired by Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.

Oxford Semantic Technologies, founded in 2017 by Oxford University Computer Science professors Ian Horrocks, Boris Motik and Bernardo Cuenca Grau, is the developer of RDFox®, the world’s most advanced knowledge graph software with semantic reasoning – supporting AI applications where accuracy is mission critical. OSE was one of the company’s first investors, alongside Samsung Venture Investment and Oxford University Innovation.

Since 2018, Oxford Semantic Technologies has collaborated with Samsung Research on a range of projects, applying RDFox® to enhance Samsung’s products. Samsung now plans to apply the technology across a wide range of products, including mobile devices, televisions and home appliances. RDFox® combines with Samsung’s on-device AI technology to create hyper-personalised user experiences, while ensuring full privacy and security of data on the device.

Unlike other graph technologies, RDFox® transforms an organisation’s data into machine-readable knowledge and dynamically adds new insights, turning large, complex and multi-source datasets into a unified, high-performance queryable database.

Sam Harman, Principal and Acting Head of Deep Tech at OSE said:

“This is great news for Oxford Semantic Technologies and Samsung. The company’s groundbreaking technology can play a big role in the advancement of AI across Samsung’s products. We’re proud to have worked with Oxford Semantic Technologies since the very beginning, helping them to turn brilliant research from an Oxford laboratory into technology that will now be used in homes around the world.”

Peter Crocker, CEO of Oxford Semantic Technologies said:

“We are delighted to be working with Samsung. 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 personalisation. We are grateful for our partnership with Oxford Science Enterprises. In addition to their important financial investment, they have been a critical source of knowledge and support in turning our academic research into a commercial product.”

The acquisition of Oxford Semantic Technologies demonstrates the potential within Oxford University to turn world-leading academic research into successful science and technology companies. It follows other major portfolio exits from OSE, including Deep Tech company Latent Logic and biotech firms MiroBio and DJS Antibodies.