Qualcomm Unveils Agentic AI-Powered Mobile Platforms

Qualcomm has introduced two new flagship mobile platforms at its Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 Mobile Platform and the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Mobile Platform are built on a 2nm process node and feature Qualcomm's Oryon CPU, a rearchitected Adreno GPU, and an updated Hexagon NPU.

The new platforms are designed to run agentic AI agents on smartphones, allowing for high performance in gaming and productivity. Akash Palkhiwala, Qualcomm CFO and COO, said that these chips will enable the use of personal AI agents, such as Meta's Muse and Google's Spark, directly on devices.

The proliferation of agentic AI is expected to create new use cases and expand beyond smartphones to automotive, home devices, and wearable tech products. Palkhiwala noted that when using agents on a device like a smartphone, there will be a seamless transition between handling tasks locally or accessing cloud compute. The agent will make the choice and needs to be transparent to the user.

Qualcomm's strategic transformation includes data center expansion, full-stack physical AI solutions, and integrated hardware-software platforms. Palkhiwala said that Qualcomm can play on both sides of the market, which is attractive for the company. The Snapdragon Summit continues through Thursday, September 24.