Consider the refrigerator. Its compressor can work beautifully while its owner stands in front of the open door, wondering what to cook. Better refrigeration does little for that particular problem. A recipe, a shopping list and a little knowledge of what is already inside might. For Samsung Next, the distance between those two kinds of usefulness is a place to invest.
- The offer: venture capital plus help finding a commercial fit within Samsung.
- The evidence: Whisk’s journey from recipe platform to Samsung Food.
- The catch: an investment does not establish a purchase order, an integration or an acquisition.
Samsung Next is the corporate venture arm of Samsung Electronics. Its portfolio spans AI, robotics, health technology, consumer services and frontier technology. These are different markets with a shared possibility: a small company might supply something a large hardware business needs, before that business knows precisely how to build it.
The software problem inside the hardware company
The organization dates its investing history to 2012. David Eun, identified by Samsung as its founder, helped give the effort a clear rationale. In January 2017, Samsung’s Global Innovation Center became Samsung NEXT and announced a $150 million fund targeting pre-seed through Series B companies.
“We see software and services becoming a core part of Samsung Electronics’ DNA”David Eun · January 2017
That was a fund commitment, rather than a startup fundraising round. Its purpose was to widen Samsung’s exposure to emerging software and services. The announced interests included artificial intelligence, virtual reality and the Internet of Things. The portfolio was a way to run several experiments without requiring every experiment to begin inside Samsung.
There were already examples. Samsung’s predecessor innovation group facilitated an investment in LoopPay, whose technology worked with existing magnetic-stripe payment readers. Samsung announced its acquisition in 2015. In 2016, the group spearheaded the acquisition of Viv, an AI interface company. Both cases addressed the experience around hardware: paying with a phone, or speaking to a device.
A recipe earns its place
Whisk makes the argument easier to see. When its team announced the agreement to join Samsung Next’s product organization in 2019, the business already had momentum. Over the preceding year, it said, its team had grown from 14 to 32, revenue had tripled, and it was profitable. It powered more than half a billion recipe interactions a month.
The chronology matters. Whisk began working with Samsung in Britain in 2016. The acquisition followed an operating relationship. Samsung could examine a functioning business and an existing collaboration, rather than rely entirely on a promise about future compatibility. For a founder, that is a useful sequence to study: make the commercial argument observable.
- 2016Work with Samsung begins
- 2019Whisk joins Samsung Next
- 2023Whisk becomes Samsung Food
In 2023, Whisk became Samsung Food. Samsung described a service combining recipe discovery, meal planning, connected cooking and social sharing. Here was a specific use for the combination: software could help someone decide what to eat, then connect that decision to the appliances involved. The refrigerator acquired a job beyond keeping the milk cold.
The investor takes the passenger seat
Today’s published approach describes minority, non-lead investment, with flexible checks across stages and follow-on capital linked to commercial opportunity. For founders, the distinction is practical. A lead investor and a corporate participant can perform different jobs in the same round. Samsung Next’s particular proposition is help navigating the parent company.
That places it alongside other corporate investors, including Qualcomm Ventures, Intel Capital and Sony Innovation Fund, as an alternative or complement to independent venture capital. The meaningful comparison is which organization can help with the next concrete task. A health startup, an AI infrastructure company and a robotics team may need very different introductions.
Samsung’s business units also have something to gain: a view of technologies and teams developing outside their own roadmaps. In 2018, Eun described bringing startups and internal business leaders together through workshops and demo days. The expertise was partly technical and partly organizational. Knowing whom to ask can matter almost as much as knowing what to build.
When the servers stopped, the maps survived
Mapzen supplies the less comfortable part of the record. The Samsung-backed mapping business announced that its hosted APIs and support would end on February 1, 2018. For developers using those services, the immediate problem was continuity. They needed another provider or the ability to run the software themselves.
Mapzen had built its core products on open software and data. Its shutdown announcement could therefore point users toward self-hosting and alternatives. In January 2019, the Linux Foundation announced Mapzen as a project. The operating business had ended; useful technology could continue under different stewardship.
The lesson is specific enough to copy. If other people build on your infrastructure, make their exit possible. Open code, exportable data and a migration guide reduce dependence on one organization’s willingness to keep paying for servers. They do not make a service immortal. They give its users options when the institution changes.
The next check still needs a customer
The investment agenda keeps moving. In February 2026, Odyssey announced backing from Samsung Next and NVentures for research toward a general-purpose world simulator. On October 20, Daytona named Samsung Next among the strategic investors in its $60 million Series B for AI-agent infrastructure. That figure describes Daytona’s entire round, rather than Next’s individual check.
For a founder considering the firm, the useful preparation is a concrete account of relevance: which Samsung product, which technical constraint, which commercial owner? A company seeking a lead investor must also account for Next’s stated non-lead role. A business that needs guaranteed distribution cannot assume equity investment supplies it. Whisk offers the more persuasive ambition: build something people use, establish a working relationship, and make the next conversation about a problem both sides can already see.