*By Conor White* In the arms race between tech giants, there is no such thing as a vacation. For Samsung, it relies on its Catalyst Fund, led by Shankar Chandran, to find the next emerging market. "A company of our scale, we really have to think about what are those trillion-dollar opportunities?" Chandran asked. In an interview Friday on Cheddar, Chandran said the Catalyst Fund was on the "front lines", constantly searching for companies and ideas in which to invest. "The investment team's job is to really be the eyes and ears for the company," he added. Currently, those eyes are firmly fixed on data and artificial intelligence. "Almost every single industry will get reinvented by data and A.I. over the next couple of decades," Chandran said. For Chandran, the value gleaned from combining the two is almost immeasurable. "Data is the new oil," he said. Humanity was aware of oil for thousands of years, but it wasn't until the internal combustion engine was created that demand went through the roof, and prices skyrocketed, he added. "A.I. is the internal combustion engine that changed everything." For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/samsung-catalyst-fund-head-talks-evolution-of-vc).
