BlackBerry Dials Into Physical AI as Revenues Jump 26%

BlackBerry is signaling a shift toward physical artificial intelligence and advanced platform-as-a-service models as revenues climb.

The software company reported earnings Thursday (June 25) showing revenues of $152.9 million, a 26% year-over-year increase. The company says it sees promise from its general embedded management (GEM) platform, which helps power AI-enabled industrial and robotic systems.

“We’re particularly excited about the long-term opportunity in physical AI,” CEO John Giamatteo said during an earnings call. “As intelligent machines become increasingly autonomous and operate around people, the requirements for safety, security, reliability, and real-time determinism become even more important.”

He added that “unlike probabilistic AI systems,” the technology behind BlackBerry’s QNX operating system “is deterministic and safety certified, which is exactly why it is so hard to replicate and why customers trust it for systems where failure is not an option. In many ways, automotive has been a proving ground for the demands of physical AI.”

The need for deterministic, safety certified systems has become more important now that modern vehicles are “robots on wheels,” as Giamatteo said. Demand for such systems has helped bring the company’s development license revenue to its highest level in eight quarters.

“This really matters because development licenses are one of the earliest indications of future growth with customers investing in tools as they begin developing new software platforms on QNX,” Giamatteo said.

On the security front, BlackBerry is capitalizing on a global trend toward “digital sovereignty,” as governments prioritize secure communication infrastructure over public consumer apps for sensitive operations.

“I think governments are starting to realize, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t do top-secret communications on WhatsApp and Signal and Telegram, and go to a much more secure and reliable communication,’” said Giamatteo. “All of those trends we think are generating a really healthy pipeline for us across the business.”

In other physical AI news, PYMNTS wrote earlier this week about the challenges insurers face in drafting policies around this technology.

The report cited findings from Gallagher Re which showed that as robots and autonomous vehicles increasingly run on AI, product liability coverage may respond to injury and property damage, but only in places that view AI software as a product.

“Financial losses from the same failure get no coverage at all,” the report added. “That risk has no geographic limit. A hurricane is bounded by landfall. A factory fire is bounded to one site. A flaw in one widely used AI model can spread instantly to every business running it, in every industry and country at once.”

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