August 2026
Asked how BlackBerry positions itself in AI, Giamatteo answers that the company is deliberately careful about how much AI goes into the code of its own products. The QNX platform runs safety-critical software in vehicles, where failure has to be ruled out rather than made unlikely. This is where he draws the line.
Transcript
We still think it's still a little early days, if I'm honest. It's not something that's going to completely disrupt the industry in the next 12, 18 months. But we do see it as a wave of the future, something that's coming down the pipe. And we collaborate just the way we work with all. The chip manufacturers and the OEMs and the tier one suppliers in that part of the industry, we have a deep collaboration that we work with them on. So I'm sure you'll see BlackBerry and QNX platform playing a prominent role in that as that part of the industry takes hold.
This is all powered by advances in artificial intelligence across the board. And, you know, as people look at the landscape around AI, they see areas like semiconductors, which have done very well from a financial perspective, the model companies, which are gaining a lot of traction as well. What is, if I were to ask you, New, what's BlackBerry's positioning in the world of AI? How would you describe it?
We lean into AI in a very deep way, but we do it the way I would describe it, Archer, is really in a pragmatic way. You know, we're a little bit careful about how much AI we actually put into the code of our products because, you know, back to kind of safety, secure, and certified type of software, those robotoxies, failure is not an option. They have to stop. They have to turn. They have to do all the things they need to do every single time. Blue screening in a robotaxi is not an option. Being a little bit cautious about how much AI technology you actually put into the code that's powering those tax or those autonomous vehicles or any vehicle for that matter is something we're very, very careful. Now, will we use AI technology around testing new products and integrating new products and different ways to be more efficient and to get improve our overall time to market? Absolutely we will. But we're a little bit careful on how much we literally inject into the code into the products that are actually powering a lot of these things.
I want to just take you away from the conversation for a minute to talk about software because this is so central these days to the BlackBerry story. Now, John Giamateo of BlackBerry mentioned safety-critical software. What exactly is that? When you think about a car or a robot, these are things that are run on software these days. But it's not just any app that makes these things work. There is a complex software system that underpins these things. And you've got to have software in there that can't fail. What if the brakes of a car stop working or a robot mid-activity breaks down? The stakes are high. The risks are very high as well. And that's why safety-critical software is so central to the BlackBerry story. This is software and systems that have to be designed and tested to behave in a highly predictable and reliable way. There are lots of industry standards to test this as well. But AI poses a new challenge because we're seeing more and more AI integrated into software. The problem is AI is not always accurate. AI is not always reliable. And in something like a surgical robot, for example, or an autonomous car, accuracy is a non-negotiable, which is why, as John says, a robo-taxi can't simply blue screen.
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