Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon on the new world of AI agents

Imagine this: you’re wearing a pair of glasses with a built-in camera and a visual display.

You’re walking down the road and you remember you need to make a reservation at a restaurant. Instead of using your smartphone to research recommended spots, you talk to your digital assistant who manages to get it done, across various apps, and sends you a booking confirmation.

This is the new world of AI agents across new types of gadgets envisioned by Cristiano Amon, the CEO of Qualcomm, a chip company that lives at the heart of many consumer devices. 

The example I provided involves the use of several apps like a restaurant booking app, payment service and email for the confirmation. An agent will be to coordinate across all of these, Amon told me on The Tech Download podcast.

Apps are “not dead,” he said — “but apps are going to change.”

“Those agents are going to be the new app,” he added.

I’ve spoken to Amon over the years about the changing nature of our smartphones which have become more advanced, as they can now fold and feature very powerful cameras. 

While many companies have attempted to create digital assistants — from Apple with Siri to Samsung with Bixby — they’ve yet to fully live up to their promise. With ever advancing AI models, these digital assistants are now getting more capable.

That also means the devices that power our digital lives can change. 

 “The phone is around the agent. The new classes of devices … are going to be around the agent as well,” Amon told me.

These shifts could also spark a new wave of devices. 

Amon said Qualcomm is working on over 40 different designs of AI gadgets. These include jewelry, earbuds with cameras, pins and watches.

“The principle is something that you wear, something [that] is with you all the time, something that can see the world around you, so you have context and have the ability for you to access an agent and talk to the agent,” Amon said.

But for now, he’s most bullish on smart glasses and expects they could eventually be as big as the smartphone. For context, there were more than 1.2 billion smartphones shipped last year. 

I’m excited to see how the agentic experience on consumer devices evolves. The potential use cases are vast, but the success might depend on striking the right balance between privacy and functionality. As agents become more pervasive, privacy concerns will be key. 

I’m also curious about what this will mean for the broader device landscape and whether the dominance of Apple and Samsung gets challenged or whether these companies will lead the wave of new AI gadgets.

CEOs of Anthropic and Google DeepMind called for a U.S.-led coalition to shape rules and standards around artificial intelligence at a G7 meeting with tech leaders and heads of state, including President Donald Trump, sources told CNBC.

Intel’s stock surged after U.S. President Donald Trump said the company will partner with Apple on U.S. chip design.

Nvidia is aiming to raise at least $20 billion in debt, according to sources with knowledge of the matter, in the chipmaker’s first bond sale since the start of the AI boom.

Waymo is recalling almost 3,900 robotaxis in the U.S. to fix software issues after some cars drove into freeway construction zones, according to notices filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Yann LeCun, founder of AMI Labs, told CNBC that Elon Musk’s xAI is a “failure” that will be unable to compete on the frontier of artificial intelligence, as he laid out his view on what could cause a “big bubble explosion” in the industry.

The quote: “While Elon’s setting the vision, she’s the one making sure it gets delivered,” Nathan Silvernail, who spent seven years at SpaceX as an engineer on projects like life support systems from 2014 to 2021, told CNBC.

The big picture: Silvernail was referring to SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell, who joined the company as one of Musk’s first hires and now leads the 22,000-person organisation on a day-to-day basis.