We may witness one of the biggest breakups in tech history come January 2026. As the world’s leading smartphone maker by volume, Samsung has long been one of Google’s staunchest allies and most valuable partners. The tech powerhouses’ strategic alliance proved ironclad in January 2025, when the South Korean corporation partially pulled the plug on its own AI voice assistant Bixby in favor of Google’s Gemini AI, making the latter the default AI assistant on their flagship phones — a privilege the Alphabet subsidiary broke the bank for, paying Samsung an “enormous sum of money every month,” according to Bloomberg.

While Google had supposedly secured the privilege for two years, Samsung seems to be having second thoughts just half a year in. According to Ars Technica and Bloomberg, Samsung might drop Gemini in favor of Perplexity AI as soon as January 2026, coinciding with the release of the anticipated flagship S26 series. Both companies are reportedly in private talks to “preload Perplexity’s app and assistant on upcoming Samsung devices and integrate the startup’s search features into the Samsung web browser,” as part of a wide-ranging investment deal between both tech giants, according to anonymous sources cited by Bloomberg.

Is Perplexity coming for the search titan’s throne? The AI search startup is currently in late-stage discussions to raise USD 500 mn at a USD 14 bn valuation, — with Samsung rumored to be one of its biggest investors — and is quickly rising in popularity. So fast was Perplexity’s ascent that it sent Google on a downwards spiral due to which the search market monopolizer quickly introduced a flawed AI Overviews feature in 2Q 2024, and scrambled to introduce AI Mode earlier in May 2025 — both of which were met with a cold welcome.

The beginning of the end of an empire? Apple may be following in Samsung’s footsteps — the Silicon Valley giant showed interest in having Perplexity search replace Google as their default browser, as reported by Bloomberg in May. If a precedent is set by the two largest phone manufacturers, this may spell trouble for the company that has more or less adopted a “if you don’t like it, leave” response to clients and publishers protesting covertly changing guidelines.

This also begs the question: If Samsung moves away from Google Search, will the company leverage access to Android OS as collateral? Google could at the very least threaten to restrict Samsung’s access to key parts of the Android ecosystem, including Google Mobile Services, the Play Store, YouTube, Gmail, and Google Maps. Google’s licensing of the Android OS and its trademark requires phone manufacturers to preinstall a suite of Google apps and services, and adhere to exclusivity agreements regarding default assistants and search providers. In April, Google did just that to Motorola, blocking the manufacturer from making Perplexity AI their default assistant.

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