Barcode Veteran Zebra Technologies Sprints Ahead in AI Innovation

Zebra Technologies, a leader in data management and barcode scanning, has always been an AI specialist at heart. 

Modern barcode scanners benefit from machine learning techniques that make code interpretation easier in low-light conditions, at odd angles to the reader, or when the code label isn't exactly perfect. 

The business began expanding on its AI know-how years ago with strategic acquisitions including machine vision veteran Matrox in 2022 and AI-based retail forecasting expert Antuit.ai in 2021.

It appears that Zebra's executives anticipated the AI boom far in advance.

Given the size of the company's customer and partner network and Zebra's own experience with data pattern analysis, this early finding should come as no surprise.

Barcode Veteran Zebra Technologies is earning its AI stripes

In light of this, the business has teamed up with Qualcomm (QCOM -2.11%), a major player in the semiconductor industry, to enable Zebra's handheld tablets and computers to run a large language model (LLM) akin to ChatGPT.

"It's leveraging Qualcomm technology along with our software to do that, and other large language models, but us populating those models with our customers' information," Bill Burns, CEO of Zebra, explained. 

"Our customers are really excited about it."

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