Jihong Kim

Jihong Kim is a Managing Director at Samsung Ventures America, the U.S. arm of Samsung's corporate venture capital organization (Samsung Venture Investment Corp.). He joined Samsung Ventures in 2012 and focuses on investments in AI, software, services, and robotics. In the role he has led both financial and strategic investments and works closely with Samsung's business units across mobile, consumer electronics, and enterprise software to identify and build strategic partnerships.

Before venture capital, Kim built a mixed operating-and-finance background. He began his career as a software engineer at Lucent Technologies and was an early team member at the startups nDosa and CommASIC (the latter acquired by Freescale). He then moved into finance and advisory roles: research analyst at a long/short equity hedge fund (SFG), investment banking at HSBC and JMP Securities, and management consulting at PwC.

He was educated entirely at the University of California, Berkeley, earning a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and later an MBA from the Haas School of Business. This engineering-plus-finance combination underpins his focus on deep-tech and technical software companies.

Separately from his Samsung mandate, Kim is an active personal angel investor, backing early- and seed-stage companies across AI, infrastructure, and frontier technology.

• Invests primarily in AI, software, services, and robotics, plus enterprise/B2B software and digital media — the core themes he has described in interviews as "deep tech & B2B software."
• On the Samsung Ventures side, pursues both financial and strategic investments, prioritizing companies that can form partnerships with Samsung's mobile, consumer-electronics, and enterprise business units.
• Comfortable with technical, deep-tech bets beyond pure software — e.g., green-hydrogen electrolysis (Verdagy) and autonomous-driving perception (Phantom AI).
• As a personal angel, writes seed-stage checks into early companies (AI, infrastructure, gaming/community tooling).
• Engineering background (EECS) means he engages deeply with technical product and platform details; finance background (IB/hedge fund/MBA) means he underwrites market and outcome discipline.