[THE INVESTOR] Samsung Electronics has reportedly been running an investment firm in the semiconductor sector in San Jose, California.

The investment firm, Samsung Oak Holdings, was incorporated on June 6 in the area, but its business purpose had not publicly been disclosed.

A Samsung official was quoted by a Korean news outlet as saying “Samsung Oak Holdings is a holding firm that mainly invests in start-ups or ventures for Samsung’s device solution division.”

Samsung’s DS division is in charge of four businesses -- memory chips, system large-scale integration, liquid-crystal displays and storage systems.

Samsung did not specifically say the California-based holding company is focused on making investments in chip businesses, but market watchers speculated that it is aimed at beefing up Samsung’s capacity in the non-memory sector, where Samsung lags behind other rivals such as Qualcomm.

Across industrial sectors, the tech giant has been ratcheting up its efforts to acquire global companies.

High-end built-in electronics firm Dacor, cloud services provider Joyent and ad tech firm AdGear are some of the latest acquisitions of Samsung this year.

By Kim Young-won (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)