Samsung's adorable sphere-shaped robot Ballie is finally coming later this summer, and only in the U.S. and South Korea, the company announced this week.
Additionally, the rolling robot is coming with Gemini AI via a partnership with the Google Cloud team.
With the AI enhancements, Samsung says, "Ballie will be able to engage in natural, conversational interactions to help users manage home environments, including adjusting lighting, greeting people at the door, personalizing schedules, setting reminders, and more."
Samsung hasn't provided any specs for Ballie, so it's unclear what will power Ballie. The announcement says Samsung is combining its AI capabilities with Google's models, which adds multimodal capabilities to the robot. This means that Ballie can access audio, visual and voice data from its built-in sensors.
According to the company, Ballie can also manage smart home devices and offer health and style recommendations.
The partnership with Google is likely related to the ongoing collaboration between the two companies on the Project Moohan mixed reality headset, which also had deep support from Google Gemini.
Beyond a vague summer launch, Samsung has not released a price for Ballie. With uncertainty surrounding President Trump's tariffs, the company may act cautiously until the release date.
A Brief Ballie history
![AI 컴패니언 ‘볼리(Ballie)’ 공개! 볼리가 만들어 줄 영화같은 일상 [CES2024] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/YBfSX3QiqDM/maxresdefault.jpg)
We first saw Ballie way back in 2020, when it was more of a concept than a product and was much smaller. Ballie disappeared until last year, when it was one of the spotlights of CES 2024.
At the time, Samsung said Ballie would arrive sometime in 2024. The year ended sans robot.
Ballie returned for CES 2025, where the Korean company announced that the rolling bot would ship to customers in the first half of 2025.
Samsung showed Ballie doing things like projecting stars on ceilings or presentations during meetings. It was supposed to act as a second pair of eyes and respond to voice commands and "foot presses" to complete tasks.
When might we see Ballie?
Ballie has already been delayed a couple of times, between the missed 2024 window and the first half of 2024. To be fair, the first half of 2025 includes a really early summer window.
Assuming Ballie is coming this summer, we expect Samsung to announce the rolling bot during its summer Galaxy Unpacked event, where we should also see the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Galaxy Z Flip 7 foldable phones.
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