Samsung’s Struggling Mobile Business Has A New Leader

As its smartphone sales continue to lag behind competitors, Samsung Electronics announced today that it will reshuffle the leadership of its mobile division. J.K. Shin will no longer be in control of its day-to-day operations and instead hand that responsibility over to Dongjin Koh.

Before the change, Shin held the double-barreled title of head and president of Samsung Electronic’s mobile business. The president title has been handed over to Koh, who helmed the development of the well-received Galaxy S6 and Galaxy Note 5 series while serving as the head of Samsung Electronics’ mobile research and development department. Shin will stay on as head of mobile, which means he will focus on long-term strategy and potential growth opportunities, says Reuters.

Samsung has lost its edge in worldwide smartphone sales over the last two years. In China, an important growth market for manufacturers, sales of Samsung handsets have fallen behind Apple, Xiaomi, and Huawei.

Koh’s new appointment is part of a larger management change that started after Lee Jae Yong, the vice chairman of Samsung Group, began to assume more responsibilities after his father, Samsung Group chairman Lee Kun Hee, had a heart attack last year. In July, the younger Lee won a shareholder vote approving the $8 billion merger of two Samsung affiliate companies, Cheil Industries and Samsung C&T, which in turn gave him more power over Samsung Electronics.

Samsung usually moves executives around to new positions once a year, based on their performance, but this is the first time Lee Jae Yong has made significant changes since taking the helms from his father.

Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates Join Forces To Invest in Clean Energy Technology

The founders of Facebook and Microsoft are teaming up to solve climate change. Mark Zuckerberg announced today that he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, have launched the Breakthrough Energy Coalition with Bill Gates to invest in zero-carbon energy technology around the world. The organization’s membership roster includes some of the most prolific names in technology, including Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, Jack Ma, and Masayoshi Son.

The news was timed to coincide with the U.N. Climate Control Conference, which will take place in Paris this week. During the event, Gates and U.S. President Barack Obama are expected to unveil a significant new initiative called Mission Innovation, which will work with governments to double public investments in energy research over the next five years.

According to the Washington Post, the 19 countries that have already joined Mission Innovation will increase their annual spending on clean-energy research and development to $20 billion by 2020.

Mission Innovation and the Breakthrough Energy Coalition are separate programs, but will work closely together in countries that have committed to reducing carbon emissions.

On its website, the Breakthrough Energy Coalition explains that its goal is to cover gaps in government funding in countries by commercializing the most promising and scalable ideas to come out of public research institutions. It will take a flexible attitude toward investments, providing early-stage to Series A funding in several sectors, including electricity generation and storage, transportation, industrial use, agriculture, and energy system efficiency.

Machine Intelligence In The Real World

I’ve been laser-focused on machine intelligence in the past few years. I’ve talked to hundreds of entrepreneurs, researchers and investors about helping machines make us smarter.

In the months since I shared my landscape of machine intelligence companies, folks keep asking me what I think of them — as if they’re all doing more or less the same thing. (I’m guessing this is how people talked about “dot coms” in 1997.)

On average, people seem most concerned about how to interact with these technologies once they are out in the wild. This post will focus on how these companies go to market, not on the methods they use.

In an attempt to explain the differences between how these companies go to market, I found myself using (admittedly colorful) nicknames. It ended up being useful, so I took a moment to spell them out in more detail so, in case you run into one or need a handy way to describe yours, you have the vernacular.

The categories aren’t airtight — this is a complex space — but this framework helps our fund (which invests in companies that make work better) be more thoughtful about how we think about and interact with machine intelligence companies.