Qualcomm‘s CEO Cristiano Amon recently spoke at the annual Computex event in Taiwan to stake the company’s claim in the next phase of AI. In his keynote he argued that AI technology will reshape demand for compute across devices, networks and data centres.
Amon described 2026 as the “year of the agent”, stating AI is moving from prompt-based interactions to autonomous systems capable of planning, reasoning and acting across smartphones, PCs, cars, robots and industrial equipment.
“Agents are not coming in the future. They’re already here”, he said, adding the shift is “changing a lot of the compute” and could generate “a lot of demand for new classes of devices and computing”, creating “one of the largest” upgrade cycles the industry has seen.
Amon said the smartphone will no longer sit alone at the nexus of the digital ecosystem. “Agents become the centre of your digital experience”, he stated, adding devices will increasingly become “endpoints for agents”.
Compute continuum
To this end, the executive laid out Qualcomm’s ambition to support the AI infrastructure transition. Amon pointed to the need for CPUs, GPUs, NPUs and connectivity designed to support AI workloads both on devices and in the cloud, stating the company can help scale AI compute from “sub-2 milliwatts” in devices such as earbuds to kilowatt-level systems in data centres.
He also stressed the engineering challenge around battery life and latency, noting devices must be able to support complex planning, reasoning and coordination. “I cannot emphasise enough the importance of power”, he said.
In addition, Amon framed 6G as a key part of the future AI architecture, noting it is the first wireless generation designed as an AI-native network connecting distributed, hybrid intelligence across devices and data centres.
During the event, the chief also unveiled Dragonfly, Qualcomm’s new data centre brand aimed at inference workloads. He said Qualcomm is already working with hyperscalers and global partners on deployments, adding the fresh brand will allow its portfolio to span “every single tier of the compute continuum”.
Source: Mobile World Live
Image Credit: Qualcomm